Petr Andrle

“They put me in the prison kitchen for the last month of my custody. There, I found out that there was a system how one could send a letter outside. No one knew anything about me, no one wanted to tell anything to anyone. It was horrible. They told me in the kitchen, that I could write a letter and they will deliver it to my wife, with a condition that she pays 500 CZK to a woman who would deliver it to her. It was the lady who was coming to the prison for garbage. She always put the letters in a plastic bag and put them on the bottom of the bucket under the scraps. The guards knew her. She was carrying the letters away like that, delivering them to the addressees and collecting five hundred for each. It was a pretty good deal at that time. So, my wife found out where I was. And there was a window in the kitchen from which one could see the road outside. Because I didn't know at all if everyone was alive, I wrote to her to walk on a certain day and hour down the road in front of the prison, that I would see her. Also, I mentioned that she must not look at the windows. They arrested me just at the time when my second child was born, a daughter with infant hepatitis. I didn't know how it turned out for her. At the agreed time, I saw a boy along the way scuttling, followed by my wife with a stroller. From this I understood that the three of them were all right.”

“One day two gentlemen visited me. They did not introduce themselves. They said they needed information about some older photographs, and that they heard that I could help them. I said I was willing to look at them. They asked me if I could go with them to the security office that they had the photos there. I was naive, I had no suspicion. I remember it was in December. At that time I wore a fur coat. So I put it on and told the secretary that I would be back soon. And I didn't come back. They put me in a cell and interrogated me there. They were asking nonsense things. They didn't say what they blamed me for. They asked questions, I said what I knew. Then I was taken to the custody prison in Karviná. I spent three months there. I didn't know why.”