Antonín Otta

“The lectures were every Sunday, [about] what was going on. The revolution, when they just chased out all the Germans from Prague, the siege of the Radio House. Well, and one man spoke up, saying he knew how it was - there were about four or five hundred of us listening there. It had been said that the Party had decided in what way the Czech Radio - Czechoslovak Radio back then - would be managed, occupied. And I’ll tell you a whopper. [...] ‘Any remarks?’ So one prisoner put his hand up: ‘Here.’ - ‘What have you got to add?’ - ‘That it’s not true.’ And he briefly explained, in ten minutes at most, in what way the Prague radio house was occupied, what went on there. And the cop said: ‘The way I said it is how it happened. You can’t even know anything about it.’ And he said: ‘Yes I can. I was the journalist who broadcast it.’”

“Well, for instance, I didn’t see this, but I heard about it. The guards could do whatever [they liked], or if it was a political supervisor, those were even more confident. Say, he’d stand a priest - who otherwise preached at church - on the compost heap. ‘You’ll stand there until you say: “Virgin Mary was a whore.” Well, that priest won’t say it. So [the supervisor] helped him out now and then by smashing him up. Well, and he might have stood there for perhaps twenty hours. And then, just to rub it in, they wouldn’t give him anything to eat for two days.”