Jan Přibil

"You come to Mírov. You are allowed to visit on that particular day. You have written down when and where you will be allowed. The visit is on this day and that day, please come. It's hard to get to Mírov, it's actually an old fortress in the mountains in the Šumperk region. You walk the last few kilometres there. It's a kind of town. A small town. When you get there, there's like 20 to 30 people waiting in a room like the one next to us. And nothing is happenning. And you are waiting and waiting and waiting. And then you can hear somebody saying Novák, and somebody peels away from the mass of people in the room and goes there. And it slowly goes away like that, and then the time comes when they call Přibil. So we are going there. It's a room where there's nothing but the table. Chairs on one side, chairs on the other side. We had 15 minutes at the time. The visit could last 15 minutes. Once every three months, 15 minutes. My dad was never allowed to get a packet once in five and a half years. Not once. When my mother asked for it, she always got the answer, 'He works very well, he's meeting the standard at maybe 130% or 140%, but he's still not integrated into the working class.' That was the answer. He hasn't become part of the working class. Dad really didn't integrate with them. He didn't say a decent word to anybody, nothing. He was a brave dad. And that's how we were with him for 15 minutes. And then we walked back again in a complicated way. We changed several trains to get to Prague, where we spent the night at my aunt's, and then to Třeboň."

"First of all, I must say that they [Soviet soldiers] behaved very well with us. I cannot complain at all. Although we are hearing something different about them today because of Ukraine, but they behaved well with us. Moreover, considering that my father was a watchmaker. Watches were for the Russians something like a satellite or a rocket in the sixties. It was a marvel of technology and something that every Soviet soldier wanted very much. Before the war, it was very rare in Russia to have a watch. Dad, as a watchmaker, had his shop packed with soldiers. In front of the counter, behind the counter, there were soldiers everywhere, but no one took a button from him. Nobody stole anything from him. It's true that Dad gave away many watches in euphoria, and it was understandable."

"They displayed some of the goods in the shop window, in what is now a corner house opposite the church, on the left hand side when you are going down Břežanova Street to the square. There are these big shop windows and it was full of his goods. To show it to everybody. That's them, that was the sign. They were showing the working class how the rich were keeping their property instead of giving it to the working class. It's a fact that a lot of people were against him. Understandably so. A lot of people on the other hand were with him. But those who supported my Dad, they kept quiet, or only let us know privately. But a worker like that, when he was passing by, he saw some jewellery or clocks or watches on display, and he thought, why don't I have that? How come he had it and didn't give it to the state, I could have had it. That's nonsense. But it was like that. That was how the influence of the state on a certain part of society was strengthened."