Jiří Olšaník

“I was monitored, or better – our family was monitored continuously by the StB. The most striking was when we wanted to go somewhere, like even to Yugoslavia. Though they would let us go after lengthy obstructions, we would usually get a paper saying that it was not in the interest of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for us to go. It was simply impossible. I remember that even me, when my friend and I decided, when I was still a student, and when I saved up money for a vacation to Yugoslavia and my sister stood in a line for me in Prague so I would be able to get the trip at all, in the end I decided that that was enough already, and my friend also didn’t go. He got the exit permission, but they wrote on mine: ‘It is not in the interest of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for you to go anywhere.’”

“The were army exercises going on, and big test of mobilization, and thanks to some of the laws related to mobilizations, the communists took advantage of it and came to our apartment for our car keys, saying that they were confiscating our car due to the mobilization, without providing a replacement. The new car. It was the first and last time I saw my father cry. He just couldn’t endure it. Luckily, even in the army there were some people with some sense. My father packed a bag and went to the commanding office of the western army sector in Tábor, explained the situation, and one general told him that the army really hadn’t had the right to confiscate his car. The only thing was the car had already been used in the tank training area, that officers had already been driving around the tank training area in it, so my father had to go to the tank training area to go get it back. This is also one of the paradoxes of the times, when envy and the times were responsible for such ugly deeds.”

“When Germany finally capitulated, the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade started their way back to the Czechoslovak Republic. Their convoy traveled through the bombed-out Germany which my father told us was something horrible. The Germans could not comprehend that they had actually lost the war. You could see it in the moments when Germans made booby traps for them during their trek across Germany, everything that they were saying, how they screamed at them that they would be back and that they still hadn’t accepted defeat. He said it was full of hardships. In this fashion they made their journey all the way to Nepomuk and then ended up in Sedlčansko na Neveklovsko where the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade was decommissioned and where combat duties of that armored brigade came to an end.”