Ladislav Jeník

“I’ve changed jobs about five times. I was walking around Ostrava and nobody wanted to hire me. Then I received a written summons to the secret police station by Cpt. Vojvodič. He told me: ‘Either you sign up here to work at a coal mine for ten years or we will charge you with social parasitism and you’ll get four years in prison.’ Or maybe he said five. I feared working at a mine and didn’t want to go for it. Eventually, I said ‘alright’ as he told me straight: ‘You see, you don’t really have a choice. We will make sure that they won’t hire you anywhere and if they did, they will fire you immediately. So either you sign up for ten years at a mine or we’ll charge you.’ The second or third day I went to the mine Rudý říjen in Ostrava Heřmanice, passing by the prison. There they had already known about me. So I went to the human resources where I received the highest of honors, becoming a member of the mining class.”

“We had allocated certain times when we could go see the Pope. It was one or two days a month and sometimes if necessary he’d call us by the radio and invite us for breakfast, for instance. So either we ate breakfast together or he invited us to his private chapel which was located opposite to his bedroom, to join him for morning mass. At 6 a.m. he always held a private mass where there were twenty priests or other invitees. When he wished to talk to us or when we had something to discuss we sent a message via priest Diviš, his personal secretary and he either invited us to the morning mass or to breakfast.”