First experience with detention and the StB ways
“They put me to a cell in the StB building in Pardubice, and Honza Beneš from Cerekvice was lying there under a blanket – he had attempted an escape from the country. He looked at me from under the blanket and asked me: ´What are you doing here?´ – ´Well, I’m detained here.´ – ´Man, you’ll get a thrashing, what have you done?´ – ´What have I done? Nothing really.´ – ´You gotta tell them everything, or they will give you a beating you’ve never seen in your life.´ The interrogation started the following morning: ´So what have you done?´ Bang, bang – blood started running from my nose. Then they sent my bloodied shirt home to my parents. When I returned, my father told me: ´I can’t believe they’ve sent it! They were beating you, weren’t they?´ I was scared, because I have seen guys being thrown into our cell, all beaten, they had been beating them on the soles, and they were then just crawling on all fours…” “Did they beat you a lot?” “Not that much, but blood was running from my nose more than once. The StB members were yelling at me: ´You wanted to help Petr Zenkl to return to the country!!!´ How was I to know then who Petr Zenkl was? They were pointing guns at us, trying various things, only to be able to claim: ´So that’s what you wanted!´ The gun was not loaded, they would not leave charges in it...”
- born November 8, 1933 in Oldřiš near Polička
- 1949 – took part in several activities of an anticommunist group in Budislav
- arrested September 15, 1949
- 1949–1950 – interrogated by StB in Pardubice, detained alternately in Pardubice and Chrudim
- October 7, 1950 sentenced by the State Court in Litomyšl to three years of imprisonment for high treason, strife and theft
- 1950–1951 – held in an institute for young delinquents in Zámrsk