Jan Malášek

"That was in the sixties. My first trip abroad, to the Soviet Union. I had already finished a year at the Secondary Technical School and transistors were just emerging, but the Czechs weren’t making them yet. But we knew - because I was on the electrical engineering course - that transistors were being made in Russia. And so I found myself on the way to Kiev because I wanted to buy some. Volhynians (Czechs in Ukraine) who went to Russia on regular visits already knew what to bring - a coat, shoes, things like that. And once in Russia they would get five times more money for them. It was considered normal. I bought a coat for 400 crowns and immediately sold it there for five times as much, for 2000 rubles. The ruble and the crown had pretty much the same worth. So I had 2000 rubles and with them I bought 300 tiny transistors in Kiev. There was a store where you could buy them. I didn't even know what kind to buy, as there are a lot of different kinds. I didn’t know which ones would be the most suitable, because there are also special transistors. Fortunately, I was able to sell them again and I sold them for around thirty crowns per piece. And I brought almost 300 of them, so I got ten thousand crowns [laughs]. That was incredible. I turned four hundred to ten thousand. And I didn't sell it all at once, always a little at a time, and people knew me by then. So that's how it started, that's how I got the feel for smuggling.”

"It was plain to see from the name of the street attached to the building. So I thought to myself: 'Well, this must be Italy.' I saw that on the Slovenian side it said 'ulica', whereas on the other side I could see 'via' written on the sign. So I go and say to myself, I feel so tense, you could not imagine: 'What now, what now? Should I walk all the way to the train station and check it all out again?' Then I think to myself: 'No, there will be policemen there on guard and they will have already received a message.' So I think to myself: 'That's it, I can't think anymore.' At first I stopped thinking completely , I calmed down, I walked for a while, then I made a left turn, straight towards the border. I walked about five steps and was barely 20 meters from the border, from the fence. I took about five steps and then started to run. And as I started to run, I suddenly hear police whistles from at least three different places. It was a mess, loud whistles from all sides. All I knew is that that I had to climb over where the pole was, that I couldn't move anywhere in the middle, because I wouldn't be able to get over the fence, it would have been too loose. I had to grab the barbed wire with both hands, but I just flied over, at such a speed! I tossed my bag over the fence and jumped after it. I kept running away as soon as I landed and the whistles stopped. I grabbed my bag, kept on running and suddenly there was complete silence. There was a group of people, they were looking at me from the other side of the street. Then I looked around and all around there were only signs in Italian, so I must have arrived in Italy."