Bohuslav Beňo

“I perceived the 50s as a child, but in connection with my grandfather, who was still a private farmer. Once, I was accidentally with my father- teacher on the District Committee of Comunist Party in Modrý Kameň. As a small boy, I heard how them shouting at him about how his father dares to remain a private farmer and refuses to enter Unified Farmers Cooperative. Already as a child, I found these manners strange- someone shouts at your father, and he remains silent. It was very humiliating.”

“I returned home after the first year at university and mother said to me, that policemen from border patrol were looking for me, and I was expected to report to them. I answered, I don’t have a reason for that. She, presumably based on experience, insisted I go, because something was happening. I came to the Border Control department in the neighbouring municipality, Bušince, where the chiefs were also members of StB. It began with a curiosity, they showed me weapons confiscated from a boy five years older than me, who claimed he had received them from us. As 13-year-old boys, we knew about these weapons since this was a land, through which passed both the partisans from Slovak National Uprising and later the frontline during WW2. People kept those weapons illegally, it was a little secret. It wasn't common, but many had some army rifles hidden in their attic. We told it to the eighteen year old boy, he took the weapons and that was it. The chief of border control however accused us of plans to sell the weapons to counter-revolutionaries in Bratislava. I defended myself- I was a child. He insisted that it happened in a certain context, that we would close the case and I would be treated as a person who in a significant way participated on planning counter-revolution. Then he said, that I can be cleared of this charge through beneficial behaviour. I was supposed to find out some information about in a small village, in which I lived regarding certain things, certain people, and their meeting point. I refused, that I would not do this. He said, thus I would be expelled from university, in addition with this grave charge, and who knows what impact it would have on my future. And I said I would not do that. I went home and waited for a decision from Bratislava about being expelled from the university.”