Bonaventúra Terézia Šmídová

“We had never thought of any informers in our order. There was just one interesting comment an officer said during the house search to me: ‘You pay attention and watch out who you take side with.’ So they themselves dropped a hint something like that existed.”

“At times when the events escalated, there were more cases of people being taken to State Security interrogations. Those priests from Bohemia as well as Silvester Krčméry began to train us. They tried to prepare us for interrogations, but I don´t exactly remember, in what period it was happening.”

“I also have other interesting stories to tell that happened after those raids. When we met in Blumentál church with other sisters from our community or from other orders, it was already after the worst inspections and interrogations. I invited them to my mom´s place to chat a little. I know my mom already knew what was going on, but we wanted to tell her more about what had happened. We wanted to let her know about my brother and so on. She offered us traditional halušky (gnocchi) that she´d just cooked. These sisters somehow couldn´t eat anything, and so I asked them: ‘What´s wrong? Why don´t you eat?’ They answered: ‘Well, we are sated with those papers up to here…’ Because, when they were at the interrogation, they were sitting in a room with one sister, who carried all kinds of stuff in her purse. Since they knew what would follow, they tried to tear and throw out of the window everything possible and what wasn´t possible, they ate.”