Čestmír Vaško

“It was a comfortable escape. With the Čedok travel agency - that’s the way it was done. It was nicknamed an emigration travel agency. For eight and a half thousand Crowns I purchased a fifteen day tour, which started with a flight from Prague to Amsterdam, spending two days in Holland, three days in Belgium in Brussels, and then a week in Paris. The return was by a Western European express train. Such was the plan of the journey – outbound by plane and return by the express train from Paris to Prague. Out of our group, fifteen of us got off this train in Nuremberg, and there were other people who had gotten off even earlier. More than half of the participants have thus remained in the West.”

“I can tell you how easy it was for a criminal to become a political prisoner. There was one case on the New Year. There were many prisoners and they were watching president Husák’s speech on television. There was a tall-case clock standing next to Husák and one of the prisoners said: ´I would take that clock and kick the old geezer’s ass.´ He said it quite loudly and he was later sentenced to three years for that. Three years for contempt of the president of the country.”

“The majority of the people who worked in land survey were anti-communists. Even these old experts simply could not stand the communists. They had a positive influence on me. Some people from there had emigrated already in 1968 and they sent messages and letters how things were over there. I worked there until the end of July, 1970. I was being influenced by the atmosphere there and I planned to emigrate as well as soon as the work ended. I also visited my uncle who asked me: ´So when will it go bust?´ It was like ripening of wheat. Wheat will not become ripe in a day, but the process of growing from the sprout to the ear takes nine months.”

“Vladimír (Hajný) went to see me at that time. He expected my release. He was not allowed to visit me in the Mírov prison. It was on April 9, 1982, thus in four months it will be thirty years from then. Vladimír arrived to Mírov and waited for me in front of the gate. When I was released, we went to a Jednota shop and bought ham and wine and we walked up the hill which faced the castle. Up there we had a picnic while looking at the Mírov prison and I was happy that now I was able to see the castle from the outside.”