PhDr. Peter Petras

"In '71, there were such screenings. I was extremely affected. I came before the committee - I was then at the secondary vocational school of the construction company - and all the non-working cadres had to go for so-called vetting - there was a committee where such and such a communist was there, and the director of the construction company was there. I came and they asked me, for example, 'Where were you in the '80s?' I said: 'I was in the army.' - 'And what did you do?' - 'I did nothing, I was a soldier, I had to obey orders. If they told me to do it, I'd do it. If they told me not to do it, I wouldn't do it.' Mrs. Kantor was there and she says, 'Well, but what were your views on it? Was it necessary to fight?' I said, 'I was relying on being ordered to fight or not to fight.' All sorts of questions were being asked. I said, 'I wasn't responsible for myself at that time, so you could address those questions to the army headquarters or whoever.' So Kantor says, 'And which of Lenin's writings have you studied?' Literally. I say, 'I didn't study Lenin's writings because I had no place to study them. I haven't studied any writings, I'm a simple educator, I graduated from an eleven-year school.' And she says, 'Well, your father was a tradesman.' I said, 'And I'm to blame for what my parents were?!' You know, when I found out about the commission, that there was this Kantor who boasted that she knew Brezhnev, then there was Lauf who was an ordinary bricklayer, then there was another one, a painter, the working class was represented in this commission, and now that I was being cadre. Eduard Sterbach, the director of the company, stood up and said: 'You know what, leave him alone. Mr. Petras, goodbye, have a good time.' That they would ask some nonsensical questions. When I came into my office I was so angry that I normally smashed one of the chairs on the desk, that what rude questions I had to answer, and that who is going to rule us in the future, who is going to control us, people like that. It was said that the working class would rule us. Well, if that's the kind of people who are going to rule us. But I simply had to accept that if I didn't want to have any problems."

"I remember that year, the year sixty-eight, very well, because I was in the army then. We went to Šumava for military exercises. We boarded a transport train in Benesov and it took us southwards. We stopped somewhere like Votice, because we arrived at night, so that in the morning we would unload. We slept on the ground in the carriages, in these cattle cars. Now my driver came and said: 'Peter, get up! It's war!' I said, 'For God's sake, what war?!' - 'Well, there's a war! I'm telling you, there's a war!' He had a transistor radio, we were listening to the occupying Russian troops... We went to the battery commander, who was asleep, and I said: 'Comrade commander, there must be a war.' - 'What are you mad?!' - 'Yes, listen.' He listened to it and woke up the transport commander, saying that we had to do something, that there was a war. In the meantime, all the soldiers had woken up. They called the division in Písek, and they said, 'Yes, we are occupied by the Russians. Don't unload the combat equipment from the train, because we don't know what's going to happen.' We didn't even sleep anymore, we stayed in those wagons, and in the morning the order came to unload the equipment, but 'prepare to be stationed there for a longer time'. That's where we were going to have that week-long exercise. They put us in some farm after the Germans had been driven out. They started fixing boards, making beds. I had the advantage of being made a lookout to announce enemy planes, Russian planes, over that area. In those days, there were these eight-five radios. I got somebody who knew those radios, and I recognized the planes again. I watched the overflights with binoculars and reported them to the division in Písek. Then we were ordered that all the weapons - even ammunition, submachine guns - were to be taken away from the soldiers and put in one warehouse, which was to be sealed and a guard was to be posted there. So we weren't allowed to get any ammunition, in case there was any trouble. Some Russian troops came, about two or three days after we were billeted there, towards the Austrian border. It was somewhere like Lipno or somewhere like that. That was all we encountered until then, enemy troops. Well, of course there was panic. Who's the enemy anyway? What are we going to do? Should we fight the Russians? Or will the Germans come and fight them? What's going to happen? Eventually, somehow, it all gradually calmed down. But I have to say, we felt so wronged. We were at war, and at that time, when we had to intervene, to fight against the enemies who occupied us, we were left without weapons, we didn't fight against them. I have to say this, all the soldiers felt such injustice. Some officers wrote 'Moscow - 2000 km'. There was nothing else we could do."

"When my father was in prison, I experienced a search for the first time. There were policemen in civilian clothes, one of them was called - I will remember that name for the rest of my life - Kravec - a State Security officer. For the first time there was another neighbour, I won't even remember his name. When they started, for no reason whatsoever, throwing books out of the library, overturning beds, searching, my mother was crying. I didn't understand what was going on. I didn't know what the reason was. Six months later, they came again. They threw everything out. I was asked by Kravec, the policeman, if I knew where my father had his gun. I said, 'I don't know, I've never even seen a gun in my life'. He took the air rifle that we had, that it was a gun, and he took it away. Eventually we found out that his son had the air rifle that they took from us, like for disposal, that it was a gun. These searches were repeated periodically after about six months. When my father came back from prison and started to work in Rudnany, they went again for searches to see if my father was stealing dynamite from the mines, and if he was planning any explosions or I don't know what."