Josef Křivka

“The citizens of Litomyšl were stepping out and shouting: ´Hang them, let them hang!´ Shouting at me as well… One lawyer then told them: ´Madam, be reasonable, you think we can hang fifteen-year-olds? What are you thinking?´ I still remember it as if it were today!”

“You were allowed to receive packages. I don’t remember how often… Perhaps once in a month or six weeks, I don’t know. But only if you behaved, obeyed and worked. Permits were needed for everything. If we wanted to smoke, we had to report: ´Number - mine was 2011 - is reporting...´ We had to ask for everything: if we wanted to smoke both inside and outside the institute, if we wanted pens and pencils... They were conducting searches of our desk drawers. If he found a pencil there, he would ask: ´Whose is this?´ – ´Mine.´ – ´And where is your permit?´ I had to show the permit to them. A permit was necessary for everything – for having a muffler, slippers, a tracksuit. They would eventually permit all of this, but a committee of boys was sitting there – they were on the inmates´ overseeing duty, something like the Kapos in concentration camps. These boys were in charge of all that, the wardens did not bother with details like this. And one of these boys would for example say: ´The other day he didn’t follow my orders, his bed is not made properly, he is dirty, he doesn’t clean his shoes, he swears, he’s making fun of us... Try next time. Goodbye!´ And they didn’t allow you to have it. The only thing you could do was to shut up and grit your teeth.”

“Have these circumstances changed you in any way?” “What was I to do, I was crying under my blanket and thinking of home. The older prisoners were saying: ´Don’t cry, it will go bust, anyway.´ Well, it did, but we’ve been waiting forty years for that to happen.”

“Did you expect the sentence to be so harsh?” “In September 1949, when they were wrapping up my case, the State Police members asked me: ´So how many years you think you’ll get?´ I replied: ´Well, I don’t know…´ ´C’mon, make a guess.´ I said: ´Some three years, five years?´ They looked at each other and didn’t answer. I just guessed, for how could have I known how it would really turn out?”