“In the evening my uncle from Znojmo called me and he asked me: ‘What’s happened?’ I replied: ‘What do you mean, what happened?’ ‘Well, I’m listening to Radio Free Europe and they are announcing that they arrested… that František Vyskočil was the spiritual leader of Dubček’s movement.’ I told him: ‘That’s nonsense…’ Just because he sympathized with Dubček, they made him a spiritual leader of Dubček’s movement. He was expelled from the Party: the way it was done was that they either took one’s ID card, or they expelled a person. To be expelled was the worst, because he was then not entitled to anything. He was immediately fired from his work, and he got a job from a friend in Rantířov and he began working in a locksmithery. Agents from the StB were coming every two weeks to ask whom he was meeting and with whom he was speaking…”
“Members of StB Security Police came to me and they told me: ‘You have applied to visit your dad. And so we will allow you to go to visit him, how about that?’ ‘Wow, I would be glad to go, he would be so happy…’ And they said: ‘You could even travel there for free.’ I asked: ‘Oh, really?!’ ‘Yes. But it is a trade-off. You need to do something for us. When you go there, simply look around and you will – you would pass the information to somebody. Look around and you will watch what each of them – how they act, what they tell you, you will be asking these people.’ At that moment I realized that they wanted me to collaborate with them… But I told them: ‘No, I would rather not go there, I don’t even want to go there. I am not able to do that, and I have my children here – I cannot do it and I will not do it.’”
“My boss told me: ‘That gentleman is here again, and he wants to talk to you.’ Every time I was writing a receipt for him, he would pass me food ration stamps under it and he had them cut one by one. I would always say: ‘I am not allowed to take them, there is a fine for that, I cannot take them.’ He said: ‘Please, do take them...’ He always bought clothes, men’s clothes. I thought it was strange, but I had some special feeling for him, because I always did it for him. Then he did not come for a very long time, and after a long time some other man came to the shop and he asked me: ‘You are Miss…?’ That was me. ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘I should give you greetings from Pavel. Pavel is no more.’ Pavel was tortured to death. He was a partisan, and I didn’t know it. The things he was buying - he was taking them to the forest to the partisans…”
Full recordings
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byt pamětnice - Jihlava, ulice Mahlerova , 01.04.2015
Hildegarda Vyskočilová, née Vondráková, was born in a mixed Czech-German family. After the establishment of the Protectorate she had to transfer from a Czech school to a German school, although she had never spoken German before. Her father went to the war when she was eleven years old and since then, they had only two chances to meet briefly. She apprenticed as a shop assistant and she worked in a textile shop, which was frequented by a customer who was coming there to buy goods for partisans. After the war she worked as an accountant in a locksmithery which had been abandoned by its German owners. Her husband was a member of a district committee of the Communist Party and he was expelled from the Party after 1968.
