Miluška Lišková

“This State Security officer was after him even here in Hradec, and at that time he would come to see me at work. I forgot to tell you. He stated that they'd be happy if I told them if there was anything going on and such. And I said, "What do you think? What do you want from me? What do you even think I'd be telling you? Something about somebody? I'm not a snitch, I'm not a snitch.' That's not snitching, he said. 'You'd just tell us if you knew something about somebody.' And I came to work, to the office, and I cried. And there was this Vlasta Slavíková with me, and she said, 'What happened to you, please, where have you been?' And I told her, and she said, 'Well, girl, no way, nobody can force you to do anything. For you to go around turning people in. What does he think anyway?' And she said she'd call the courthouse, that she had a friend there, and that she'd take care of it, that we'd go there. And the next day she called me, she came to work and she said, 'Mila, get your pass and we'll go to court.' So we went to see this man and he asked what had happened and I told him that this State Security man had come to see me and that he wanted me to snitch. He said, 'Well, he can't do that. What does he think, that he can afford this, being a State Security...? No way.' I guess they must have made quite a fuss there, because six months later I met him in Hradec and he avoided me."

"The worst part after he came home was, I guess he must have been dreaming about something because he was screaming at night. It was night after night. I had to hold his hand so he would just... He was crying all the time, crying during the day, crying that he couldn't find a job, that he would... Because he came home and got just a thousand crowns for seven years of work. They had to pay for everything. So I said, 'Dad, please don't cry. Mila, don't cry, don't make it harder than it already is. I'm having a hard time with all this, too. Everything will be all right.' Well, if you could see how happy he was when he joined this metal recycling company. He was so cheerful."