Jindřich Tomášek

"Participation in the events organized by Prague was a matter of course. If we managed to escape State Security, which made it difficult for us to participate in any way possible, we always participated, of course. They had a special tool for that. For example, I was regularly called to military exercises in August and Karel Mrázek in January. They obviously hated him more, because he went to the army in the winter, I went in the summer. This blocked us from important anniversaries like Palach Week in January and the anniversary of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in August. That left October, sometimes we got in, sometimes we didn't. That was one of the tools. Of course they had our employers under their thumb. They knew in advance when they were not allowed to give us holidays. Then they took advantage of a possible one-day detention, the so-called forty-eight. But there was always that effort to take part in these events."

"Karel Mrázek was of course on a training exercise and his wife and I went to Všetaty. Until then, I felt a kind of threat, but because I was divorced, I knew that I was only a threat to myself. And I had no problem with that. But since then, I've realized that they're really not good people. In Všetaty, at the train station, they picked us all up and gathered us in a farmhouse. That's where I experienced the greatest fear for the first time. It was Mrs. Mrazková. After they listened to us and after some shuffling, they started to divide us up and take us around. They separated us, which I protested against quite strongly. Because Mrs. Mrázková had health problems, she had something wrong with her knees. When I imagined that she would be thrown out somewhere and be there with those sore legs, I was worried about her. I asked if it was possible for me to stay with her. I still get goosebumps because one of the State Security officers leaned over to me and said, and I quote, 'Don't worry, you fucker, we'll take care of her for you.' I was completely fucked up. There was a time when there were no cell phones, nothing like that. They put me in a car, dumped me in the woods outside Stará Boleslav. I got to Prague in the morning, and I called one of the emergency contacts we had, John Bok. From him I learned that Mrs. Mrázková was safe with them. That's when the stone fell from my heart."

"State security was still functioning. We had a line to the Prague coordination centre. It sent us information like where things were happening, what was happening in Prague, or that couriers were coming to us. Sometime at 1:30 in the morning, the State Security officers managed to enter the line. They introduced themselves as the coordination centre and told us to get out of the building immediately, that there were tanks coming from Slaný to Chomutov. That scared us. It had the positive effect that there was much more food left for us, because half the people suddenly disappeared. The other half started barricading the door, which was funny because next to the door was a glass window that nobody noticed. Just amateurs. So that's what was going on! Of course, we often got calls that we had a bomb in there, but we didn't take that seriously. This - I don't know if it was the time of night - that scared us. After half an hour and return phone calls, we found out it was a canard."