Vladimír Beneš

“As people were gradually retiring, they were telling me: ´Man, you’ve ruined my life. Because of you, I never knew when I was free for a date and when not. You were creating my schedule, when I was allowed to go for a lunch, and when I had to go for a dinner.´ But it was not meant seriously, we parted on good terms. These were good times.”

“I and all the others were naturally interested in it, and we always listened to a radio, not to our broadcast, but the broadcasting of other radio stations. In 1968 we could listen to a number of stations via the Austrian service, including the smaller ones which were changing frequencies constantly. And in 1969 we paid attention to the news, to who said what and how people, especially the politicians, were prepared to react, if there was some conference or a politician went for some meeting to the Soviet Union, Hungary, or Slovakia, we followed the political activity, to put it simply. This was done by people who didn’t have to write. And those who had to write found a specific station, and followed it from editors’ viewpoint. But everybody was interested and everybody was listening to it, and when they came home, they continued listening.”

“The brother decided we would go for a trip to the Black Lake, then walk along the borderline and me and Standa would separate from the group there; there were two of us. So we did, each of us had a small backpack, the others as well, but they had some snacks in it. There were 14 or 15 of us, a smaller group. When we arrived to the border, and we could see the hill sloping down, the two of us stayed behind and when the others disappeared behind the hill and where the patrol was.”

“I know of some colleagues, whose brothers then told them: ´I’ve suffered because of you, they kicked me out of a job, I lost a lot of money,´ and extended a pleading hand. They thought: ´You’ve had a good time here, you’ve been earning money for 40 years and you could do whatever you wanted while we’ve been suffering there.´ But this was not the case in my family, nor with my parents or with my brother or his wife. I can thus be very happy with my family. And with the other people as well, none of them have ever blamed me for anything, nobody, not even my classmates, whom I now met for the first time in 60 years.”