Kamil Zajíček

“There was this twentieth anniversary so we had to pay a homage to this great man. So we organised a football match to honour his memory. We would invite a few friends. And I would buy some flowers and those who didn´t play would go and lay bunches of flowers on the grave. Those who came back told us that they were all around, that there were policeman patrolling, not letting people to the graveyard. However, me and my brother, we went there as well. And we us, we had been carrying a petition we had written to Husák. We wrote him a letter, stating what we didn´t like. Of course, we had mentioned human rights, the Charter 77, that Václav Havel had to be released from prison and so on. And they would confiscate it and file it immediately. Right after that they would do a house search, finding several other materials. So we had been prosecuted. But I had already been living with my friends n Opava back then so I had been in contact with the Chater 77 people. And when they heard on the Radio Free Europe that they had arrested the Huška brothers and they are prosecuting them, Ivo Mludek from Opava asked me whether I wanted them to help me, that VONS was engaged in such kind of things and that he believes they would help me. So thanks to VONS, we had been pardoned at last.”

"There were older guys living in the blocks of flat and they were what I wanted to be for me. Long hair, jeans, the casualness, the liveliness of the man. If you choose to look like that, that's what you're going to look like. I never grew hair on my head, and even though I'm sad, it was offset by the fact that those who lived with me all the time were bald and fat like me, but good-looking. Clothes were obvious. The worse you look, the more interesting you'll be to some people and they'll take you in. A's were what we called boys ten years older than us, and we were B's. We used to say to ourselves that maybe one day we'd be A's too. Of course, the boys took the foot off the gas after that, because they came back from our famous Czechoslovak People's Army, and it was my time. I would almost say that I was one of the leading long-haired boys in Vítkov. Of course, the culture and the culture of life was deeply connected with that. That is, we weren't even at home. We were always going out to see friends. Whether it was South Moravia, Prague, or maybe New Jersey - Nový Jičín, Opava."

“During such a raid a policeman would come, he would check your ID, and when he was in a bad mood, he would hit you with a baton and take you into the police van. Then they would drive you out of the city to the fields and they would throw you out. And when they were in a bad mood, they would smash your face. We didn´t know where we were. Looking back now I consider it a beginning of my tourist career. So I should be grateful. They had shown me the way I am following till today, that I am a walker and I love to walk.”