Karel Šling

“The trial with Slánský began in November 1952. And that’s when all hell broke lose, so to say. Because the headmaster of the [children’s] home decided that my brother had to listen to the broadcast of the trial and to our father admitting to the crimes he had committed. He also had to write a homework about it. I was lucky because I was two years younger, I was too small for that, so I didn’t have to endure it. But it impacted us the same, everyone turned against us, claiming that my father was a traitor. The way things were back then, when you got labelled like that, everyone went against you. So you can imagine the situation. I can say that my brother had mental problems because of it until the end of his life. I did as well, I guess, although at the time no one knew what post-traumatic disorders were, that didn’t exist back then.”

“I don’t know what last moments the condemned had exactly. But the execution took place on 3 December 1952, in the early morning, in the courtyard of the Ruzyně prison. In the same place where they executed Horáková and others. After everyone had been executed, the coffins were taken under armed guard to the Strašnice crematorium, where they were all cremated. The ashes were dumped into one sack, and two State Security officers were given the order to get rid of it. So they took it away I don’t know where. But because the road was frozen, they scattered the ashes on to the road. I know they hoked on the way, the one who drove, said: ‘I’ve never driven with ten men on the back seat before.’ When we demanded that the remains of our father be returned to us, after the rehabilitation, when my father’s sentence was annulled in 1963, we were told that the remains had been placed by unknown people in an unknown location. As I discovered from the archive, they both wrote a report stating that they had scattered the ashes on to the road.”