Ing. Vladimír Rogl

"After the coup in February 1948 even our children's organization started to bother the Communists and they begun to prepare its termination. One of their first steps was to allow only children between 6 and 15 to be members of the Scout. The older ones were automatically put into the ČSM (Czech union of the youth). They established a so-called 'action committee' in the Scout headquarters that was composed of Scouts who were at the same time members of the communist party and who were willing to eliminate the Scout movement. But since we were kids, we had no clue about this sort of thing. We were bothered by rather by the fact that the ‘Vpřed’ and ‘Scout’ magazines stopped appearing because all of a sudden, in 1949, the local action committee took away our clubroom which we had in the local fire station and so we could not meet. It was the year when I was charged with leading the Wolf Cubs as their advisor. Even the Scout's cry changed in those four years to a more mature form. For almost all of the year 1950, we met either at our place or on short half-day trips. In the meantime the schools created pioneer troops and we were quietly recommended to disband. Another sad thing was that our clubroom was constantly locked. Shortly after the coup the communists forced my father to leave the SNB (National Security Corps - regular police), where he had enlisted just after the war. This also meant no pension for our family and therefore a lot of trouble for whole family.”

"I left for my studies in Prague in the middle of September and the State Security members came for me all the way from Olomouc by the end of November. They picked me up at school when was in my class. Guys in leather coats handcuffed me and took me to the infamous police station in Bartolomějská Street. From there they took me to my college dorms where they searched my wardrobe and triumphantly found a few copied political jokes in my jacket. Three officers and a driver from the State Security in Olomouc came all the way to Prague only to investigate my 'crime'. At first, I didn't know what was going on or why they were beating me up because the first interrogation didn't concern the political jokes but the identity of the people that I was meeting and what property we owned etc. I actually got the first slap for my impertinence because I thoughtlessly corrected some grammatical mistakes in their report, just like teachers do. I also offered them to write the report myself because I saw that they had no idea how to use a typewriter."