Pavel Žigo

“In 1947, a month before I was arrested, a messenger from Laco Jankovič named Otakar Vítkovský visited me and told me he had come to take me and Jozef Staška away. We didn´t go with him. Back then I was such a big “hero” saying: ‘If it´s necessary, I will even go to a lockup for our nation! But I am not doing anything what could actually get me there!’”

“I experienced very bitter moments especially at the time when my wife left me. I was in such a position that I couldn´t believe how is that possible after I had survived different kinds of punishments, after I had overcome all sleeping on a concrete floor, horrible living conditions, portions of food each third day. All of this was the correction. I have experienced almost three years of such correction punishment and I was sentenced to it not because I had done something wrong, but because I was really dangerous for them. My investigator came and asked me: ‘Why were you so important for your colleagues?’ I answered: ‘You are the one who is asking me? How dare you?! Perhaps you made me look like that but I know nothing about being the way you are saying.’”

“I had the highest sentence - twelve years. Because I knew what were the sentences like at that time, I asked my advocate whether it would be less or more than ten years. He told me: ‘More.’ So I got full twelve years for subverting the Republic according to paragraph two, and also for military treason according to paragraph six. I was condemned in spite of the fact that a military expert, who was called to this hearing, said it was not a case of a military treason. Even though handing a little book of the Košice Government Program to Vítkovský was not considered to be a military treason, I was sentenced for it.”

“My return happened in a way I have already mentioned. They couldn´t let me go from Mírov so they drove me through Olomouc to Ruzyň, a prison in Prague. At Ruzyň a prosecutor called me and told me I would be released under amnesty in few days. It took almost a week until they freed me. The Ruzyň commander didn´t want to let me go in what I wore. He insisted they had to buy me new clothes so that I wouldn´t go home in such torn clothes. But I said: ‘I am not ashamed, I am a political prisoner and because you made me look like this, I will go and show everyone how you treated us.’ This is what I dared to say and until today I haven´t forgotten what he replied: ‘If it was up to me, you would never go home.’”

“Well, we really worked very hard in Mírov. We had to pay for our stay just because we didn´t accomplish the norms. For example, I was supposed to fix one thousand six hundred clips on tags that were made and I managed to fix only four hundred of them. Since I didn´t do it the first month, they somehow excused me, but when I didn´t manage it the second month, I had to pay because of my clumsy hands, hands that never had any exact feeling in the fingers. I had to pay my stay at Ruzyň prison for four or five months from what I had saved during the work at labour camps, when working at the building constructions.”

“I was quite well known as a student. My classmates knew me as an uncompromising, radical person and after the Košice Government Program I tried to use my patriotism also to the advantage of Slovakia. Former deputy minister at the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Prague, Eugen Löbl, employed me as a representative for Slovakia. He came from London and he was really an expert in what he did. The situation in Bohemia wasn´t positive for me, neither for other Slovaks, who left their independent country just to get a leading position at the Ministry of Foreign Trade. During the Slovak State these people used to work independently. Each individual concluded a contract and he didn´t need assistance of any commission in it. And in Czech when they became directors and heads of the divisions, they weren´t able to decide anything by themselves. It was always collective decision-making and that was what actually hindered the whole development.”