Jaroslav Teichman

"The evicting order came quickly, in a short time. As my mother told me later, my parents were at first laughing and waving the paper around. 'Look, we've been evicted too.' They were not the first family in Olomouc. Then they got drunk, then maybe my mother cried and got sad, then they got a grip and set to move. I was in Karlov at the time, so I didn't know anything. Otherwise I would have come and helped my parents with it, of course. The problem was that my parents were given an order for a house to live in Šumperk, in Temenice, number around 229 [in fact 347], up there somewhere. One day my father and I were driving past it, and he said to me, 'Look, this is where we were supposed to live.' It was up in that valley. My parents did everything they could not to move there, to stay closer to Olomouc. Their friends helped them find an apartment in Šternberk, a tiny apartment with no toilet, no electricity, no water, [just] a well, a dry toilet over a manure pit."

"Then one day I got the opportunity to visit my father. So I went there to see him. I remember the cheerless room where we had the conversation. For one thing, there were flickering fifteen Watt light bulbs, and for another, there were walls of hard-to-see-through mesh. We couldn't even shake hands or hug or give each other kisses on the cheek. 'Dad, you're great,' and some words of encouragement. The guard was there, staring at us. So we talked about meaningless things, things I might have already written him in a letter. So the visit was soon over and I went home. And shortly afterwards my father was transferred to Valdice."