Ing. Tomáš Kopřiva

“The situation at the workplace in Olomouc was interesting because the people who were against the regime were in a majority there. And even our director, who was himself a member of the Communist party, you could say that he was cheering for us. He only did not want us get locked up for too long because he needed someone to do the job. But generally he was someone who, despite his membership in the Communist Party during a certain period of time, displayed great bravery even in face of secret police officers. They came to him and asked him to fire me, Víťa Pelikán and Petr Fráňa. The door to the secretariat next to his office was open or semi-open so we heard an authentic version of what he said to them. He said: ‘Comrades, do you see that door? Please go and close them behind you. And do not ever come visit me again.‘ So you could say that even among those who were formally Party members you could find people who were able to oppose the secret police.“

“They never offered me cooperation during those interrogations or interviews. Rather, they would try to persuade us to stop doing what we did. There were of course two of them, playing the good cop and the bad cop. The bad cop would raise his voice and tell us all they could do to us and what would happen to us. And the good cop would say that we were smart and intelligent people so why should we spoil our lives like this. Why didn’t we rather go do some gardening or go swimming instead of instigating people against the regime. During one occasion, me and my colleague Tomáš Hradilek wanted to go to a court hearing but they would keep us busy in the office for so long that the hearing was over already. It happened to me a number of times that my Trabant which I used for distributing the samizdats had one wheel loosened. Once, it was not me but my father driving it and the wheel rolled off. Luckily though, he was going through a steep curve at 20 km/h so nothing happened to him.“