Ilona Bláhová

"Then, six months later, they came for my mother. That was more humane, they were polite. I remember we were in Bozkov for the fair and we came home in the evening. They came and told her to get ready, that they would come to get her in the morning and take her to Pankrác to see my father. Mummy was there as a seamstress, and I even have a handkerchief with her name on it, which she then smuggled out or gave us officially during a visit, I don't know. We were allowed to visit once a fortnight, so that's how we saw each other. But we only saw Mummy, we weren't allowed to see Daddy. Daddy was sentenced to 20 years for treason. He went through the worst prisons imaginable. It started in Pankrác, then he was in Bory, Valdice and finally in Leopoldov. He came out of Leopoldov on that big amnesty in the sixties. He came home from there. We didn't even know he was coming, we didn't get any notice, nothing. Suddenly he was at home, after ten years. It's indescribable. They had an appeals trial and my mother was acquitted; she was initally sentenced to two years. My sister was in court and took her home right away. Mother was in Pankrác for seven months, and we were alone with my sister. They left us two girls alone at home, and nobody cared if we had anything to eat or if we went to school or did anything at all. I was thirteen and my sister was sixteen. Luckily they didn't put us in an orphanage, I guess we were lucky considering all that happened."

"Why he was arrested, nobody knows to this day. A friend of my father's called him and said, 'Standa, Gaber wants to escape over the hills.' That's what it was called when someone wanted to flee across the border. 'Please, be so good and tell Gaber to get lost if he wants to, or he'll get arrested if he's talking stupid in the pub.' Actually, the person was not father's friend; more like someone he knew. Dad did it and that's why he was arrested and charged with treason. When he was arrested, we had house searches every day for three weeks in a row. Not one but three to four officers came every day to search our hose. They would come and ask, 'What is this? Oh, a magnifying glass.' The next day another bunch came in: 'What's this? Oh, a magnifying glass.' And then, during one search, a guy spilled my sister's schoolbox from her satchel and took it. He was not ashamed to come to our house two days later with it with his stuff in it. That's how it worked. They looked and looked but couldn't find anything. Then after three Sundays, they opened the attic floor and said they found guns. Daddy - I can't imagine him killing a fly; he certainly wouldn't have had any guns."