Dagmar Stachová

“We were living in a family house in Vítkovice. There was this half where we were living and the other half where my grandmother had her dry cleaning business. My grandmother gave half of the house to my mother. And after my mother was imprisoned, they confiscated all her assets including that part of the house. Yet no one told us. No one found appropriate to tell us about this, so we just went on living there. Years later, some official came, someone like today´s bailiff, and announced that my grandmother was I don´t know how many thousands in debt as she didn´t pay rent. My grandmother said that was impossible as the house belonged to her. “Well it passed on the state long time ago, you have nothing at all.' he said. It was indeed quite a huge debt back then. And after that, I remember my grandmother sending me with this hundred or maybe two hundred crowns she would save to the housing care department to pay the debt. And probably she managed to cover the debt, as after some time they were no longer bothering us. But we never got the house back.”

“My grandmother and I, we went to Staré Hamry for a vacation. We were in the dinning hall. Then this car showed up, State Security men in leather jackets jumped out from it and forced us to get on, they didn´t tell us why they were arresting us, where they were taking us or what was going to happen. They just drove us somewhere. Later, I found out that I was in Ostrava city centre, in April the 30th Street. As there was the local State Security headquarters where people were interrogated. They separated us as we got there. My grandmother went one way, I went the other. And they insisted I would tell them what my grandparents were talking about, what they were planning. I didn´t know anything of course, being just a child. As we went to bed early, not like today, when people would stay up late. So I didn´t know if they discussed anything. And if they would talk politics, they surely wouldn´t be doing that in front of me. State Security men didn´t understand that and kept tormenting me, insisting that I have to say what they were talking about. It went for quite a long time and I was really hungry. And this was one of those unforgeable moments, as this State Security man would come with a tray full of open sandwiches that smelled so good. And he kept sticking it under my nose, saying: 'Are you hungry?' And I said that was very hungry. And he said: 'I will let you have some, if you tell me what your grandparents were talking about. He kept tormenting me like this for quite some time. And I just kept crying, insisting that I just didn´t know.”