Ing. Karel Kužel

“After the war they were allotted a house of some kind in Dolní Podluží near Varnsdorf. It was something that had been freed up after the Germans [were sent away - trans.], and they got it for rent. Why didn’t my parents stay there longer: my father got into a quarrel with the local national committee, and he was ‘actioned out’, as they called it, by the action committee of the National Front for his so-called ‘anti-peoples-democratic’ attitude, because he had refused to sign petition calling for the constitutionalisation of national committees. So Dad and his wife, who was already with child and already ill and who died in 1951 - in this kind of state the family was given a three-day notice to leave.”

“The radio I bought was a great purchase because I could use it to listen to both the Voice of America and Free Europe, which was jammed. You could actually tune it out sometimes. I took an active interest in jamming technologies and countermeasures. I knew that it could be jammed both by direct wave and by reflection. The reflected waves required the jammer to be the same distance from the transmitter that it was supposed to jam. Free Europe broadcast from Portugal, which was more than a thousand kilometres away from Czechoslovakia, so the reflected-wave jammers had to be positioned all the way in the Urals in Russia. So the reflected waves would clash right above our country. But that wouldn’t suffice for perfect jamming, so every larger city had its own jammers, which used direct waves. I liked hiking, so I’d set out for the weekend and get to places that were outside of the jamming area, and then in the evening I’d listen to Free Europe or something from my radio while tucked up in my sleeping bag, and that was very refreshing.”