Jiří Pospíšil

"They broke in and stole food stamps, they knew we were living there as a family. They had no idea what they had done. So the Gestapo came, they lined us up and asked how many were missing, so that we would be shot. They told my father that he must have heard something, that someone was walking in the house. We almost died that day."

"So there was this miracle in the forest in Turzovka in Slovakia... I took my wife, my grandmother and another lady from Olšany and we went to Turzovka. There was healing water there. I parked the car in a meadow. There was a river flowing and we walked about a kilometer through the forest to the top. We checked everything out. People would build altars there, but the communists always came in and smashed and burned everything. So then I went back to work and the deputy called me and told me to take the manager with me and go to him. So I wondered what was going to happen. I went there and he started asking me, 'Is this your car?' So I saw the license plate and I said it's mine. 'The cops sent it to us, you're embarrassing the Slovaks by going to some wonder place.' So he was trying to make me admit that I was just taking my wife's family there and I was just going there for them, so he could write a report about it. 'No, not really, I wanted to see it too. I go to church and I'm a religious person, so I wanted to see what actually happened there.' That didn't sit well with him, but I have to admit he was pretty loyal about another thing before that. He said that some people, when they go to church, they go to another village. Because they kept track at the church of who was going there, and they wrote it down. I said, 'You can write it down, I go to church every Sunday in Ruda. If you want, we can meet there.'"

"I was at the technical office, I did maintenance. I took care of spare parts and plotted when something broke, ordered castings and things like that. I had a couple of co-workers there. We were kind of a resistance group, but not that we would mess something up. After the occupation, there was a new communist crew and I had to write a self-evaluation of how I felt about the military coming in. But we were glad that Dubček was there at the time. The Communists announced Dubček shifts and we went to the JZD on Saturdays to help with the harvest, or to help with the beets for free. Basically what the cooperative needed, but they organized it. There were four or five of us supporting Dubček. Now the communists were different and took us one by one. What did we write? I wrote, of course, that I wasn't interested in politics and that the changes were organized by the party and that they should put their own party in order. And so this wise guy said: 'Everything is political. Even the stool you're sitting on is political.' So I said, 'Now, huh? Now you're judging me? Now you're blaming me for Dubček's shifts? Your comrades organized them! So what do you want me, a non-partisan, to say about it?' Of course, within 14 days I was told that I was politically unreliable, and all but one of my colleagues in the technical office were told the same. They said it was a nest of opportunists."

"We were reminded by the Free Europe broadcast that people should walk to work. By “we” I mean the group of people from the technical school who stayed there. We were still being checked, so we were still together. So we walked from Ruda to work in the morning. But the communist bastards knew that. They knew something was up and they were watching us. And here in Ruda, we had one of those die-hard ones, who was the head of a department in the factory. And he reported us, and I think there were three or four of us. Me, a man named Kadlec, a secretary, and Andréska. We walked along the gully here. Well, yes, but it was terrible. We were all called in afterwards and everyone had an excuse. We just didn't admit it was a protest. It wasn't even possible."