Ján Slovenčák

“My eyes got wide-open when being in the compulsory military service. It was a real brainwashing and ‘antics’. The dumber brass, the better soldier. We used to have various absurd political trainings about the Soviet Union Brotherhood. And we didn´t pledge allegiance to the nation, but to one person, to the general secretary of the Communist Party, Gustáv Husák. The whole military service dwelled in bullying, bossing around, and in pointless orders. To give you a particular example – two soldiers went for a walk and returned a bit later. The party´s candidate wasn´t punished at all, and the other one, regular soldier, got 21 days of imprisonment. I got disgusted by the whole communist party and its machinery.”

“The prison practices were harsh. The guards were cruel to political prisoners. Even murderers were treated in much better way than a common man who didn´t do anything. There were cases, when people just mentioned emigration in pubs, and they were already arrested for that. Not speaking, that those people had never got even close to the borders. Some guards literally behaved meanly just because we were political prisoners. And we had nothing in common with politics. They gave us a cover name: Head 1 – opponents of the state. In Czechoslovakia there were officially never present any political prisoners. All regime´s representatives denied a fact there were political prisoners. I only remember names of my two co-prisoners: Jurenka and Jožko Nedeľka. I would love to meet Jožko Nedeľka from Piešťany once again. He helped me spiritually very much. It is a good man, very respectable gentleman. I had gloomy thoughts in the prison and he prevented me from doing something stupid. He said the communists were expecting me to hang myself and that more I would be resistant, harder it´d get for the communists. And that´s how it really was.”