Mgr. Marta Veselá Jirousová

"I also get asked if our classmates taunted us. My classmates were quite nice, and I was a pretty trouble-free kid because I was smart and calm. The teachers liked me and I think my classmates liked me quite a bit too. I do remember one thing though. When my sister Františka and I were sledding here on a slope in Stará Říše, two boys who lived a few houses over would shout at us, 'Your daddy's sitting, your daddy's sitting!' ('sit' = Czech slang for being in prison). We didn't get that and thought, 'Why, he may also be lying in prison'. So, even though they were mocking us, you see, somehow we didn't quite get it."

"My dad had been in jail several times. He wasn't in prison for eight and a half years straight, but he was imprisoned a total of five times, and some of those times were before I was born, and then when I was born he was locked up when I was, I think, eight months old. That was kind of the toughest prison in Valdice and then they let him out again for a while and then they locked him up again when I was, I think, maybe eight years old. Actually, he was still in prison in November 1989. As for the second part of the question, that's just difficult. Of course, I was eight months old when he was locked up, so I didn't really remember, and my dad communicated with us from that prison through letters. Mum would write letters all the time. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table and putting together this letter for a full week, which she then sent off and in return we got letters from him again. Did that affect me? There's no doubt about it. Everything that happens to a person shapes them in some way."

"That was always a big expedition, and you could go to Valdice, I think, once every eight to twelve months, so we really went there once a year. We always had to have somebody drive us there. I remember one of those trips with my mom's cousin Jan Florian driving us there. I know I threw up on the way. Also, it was always unnatural sitting so far away from each other. Dad was on the other side of the table, there were these guards and it was just weird talking to someone like that, in front of some strangers. At the same time it was interesting, but it wasn't a completely natural conversation."

"I guess it's just different when you grow up in it from a young age. I took it as a matter of fact that my dad was in prison. Actually, I didn't think it was weird at all, I thought it was normal that my dad was in jail. My mum sort of explained to us, of course, that he didn't belong there, so I took it that way. I didn't really make any big deal about it, it didn't stir up any terrible emotions in me, it just was the way it was. Dad's in prison and then he'll be back again sometime."

"I remember two house searches. Maybe there were more, but the first one, I don't really know if it's my memories or if it's the acquired memories. It was when we were still living in the sublet house in Stará Říše, it's some five hundred meters away. I remember the StB arrived in the middle of the night and the search took place at night. Our yard was full of strangers' cars, and I remember mum taking us out of our beds and they turned the mattresses and made a terrible mess."