Petr Pintner

“´I also request that in accordance with the paragraph... of act number… the public be informed about the abuse of the oath of enlistment for the sake of subjecting the army to the communist party. The oath of enlistment which was valid at the time of my refusal to take this oath, that is on October 26, 1963, was not in accordance with the Constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic of that time. Even at that time, the republic was a parliamentary democracy according to the second article of the constitution, whose representative bodies ensued from free elections, as stated in article number three.´ Although this was not known to the public, I have been requesting an annulment of this oath from the very beginning. But even after I had been rehabilitated, I met with total lack of understanding.”

“My father was an artist, he worked in the film industry. My father was a non-communist. As an artist he was a free-thinker. I can say that he was a part of that cultural scene which evolved in the film business of that time. Thanks to my father I had a chance to see some films which were normally not screened in cinemas, only in art cinema clubs. My range of knowledge was thus a bit broader than that of an ordinary person.”

“I believe that on the whole, freedom has decayed significantly in the past years. For instance, in the USA you cannot say whatever you want. Many things are forbidden. I recall this statement of president Bush: ´Those who are not with us are against us!´ He must have copied this from the communists! And even the communists eventually let go of this, they had claimed this in the 1950s, but then they began to consider this idea obsolete.”

“One day we were sitting in front of our school. Some man was walking by, he looked completely devastated, and he held a newspaper in his hand. He turned at me – a seven- or eight-year-boy – and he said: ´Look what they are doing! They sentenced a woman to the death penalty.´ That woman was Milada Horáková. Then he threw the paper on the ground and walked away. I took the newspaper and began reading it. Milada Horáková – sentenced for espionage. When I came home, I asked my father what a spy was. He replied that I would understand it when I grew older. I will never forget this.”