Jana Sůvová

"He was taken straight from work to the forced labour camp in Jáchymov. It was not a prison, nor were the people there convicted by the courts, but only by a five-member commission at the district national committee. He was picked up at the post office in Prague in Klimentská Street. They took him away and we didn't know about him, I was already seven at the time, I was six and a half years old, so of course I perceived it. We found out that my father was in Jáchymov only after a few weeks and he was there for a year and a quarter - in Jáchymov, in Pardubice, in Ústí nad Labem. Without any trial, none at all. And when he was released, he said, 'Well, I don't have a single piece of paper that you somehow condemned me for being interned here. It's just a year and a quarter of my life that went down the gutters; I don't have any confirmation from you. 'And the clerk who gave him back his ID just replied:' Mr. Špaček, just be glad you got out alive.'"

"I applied to university and no longer to where I originally intended to medicine, but then I chose economics at the Faculty of Agriculture, which was basically very little subsidized by students. Nevertheless, it was worth the long journey for our school inspector from the district national committee, who was from Horní Počernice, his name was Mr. Brácha. He arrived, had me called up to the director's office, sent the director away, and said, 'Look, you shouldn't have gotten here with your family background at all, and if you don't withdraw the application, we won't let you graduate.' At that time, I and my parents got pretty scared off by that threat. It was the year 1959, we didn't even know what could happen to us. We were terribly scared, so I withdrew my application. And now what? They sent me to work as a turner at the company Avia, eventhough I got the best grades."