Eva Dušková, roz. Vokálová

"(Q: "Did you have any siblings?") "Well, I have a sister and a brother. They were imprisoned with us too. They took us all in, the whole family. They came in the night and said: 'Don't take anything with you, you'll be back in an hour, we need to ask you some questions.' Well, and it took Mum twelve years and me five years. My brother and sister were sent home after the seven months of trial. Also: if they hadn't had aunts, they would've been let out into the streets, they couldn't care less where the children went. Those were terrible times. We couldn't go to our flat, nothing. We had the one clothes they arrested us in, for like a month, because they sealed off the flat, they couldn't get to our clothes, so they needed to go through the whole requesting permission ordeal, just to get us something to change into and send us to Block Four [Čtyřka] and Pankrác. So they allowed them to take a sweater or so, a few panties, just the minimum. It weighed two, three kilos, like nothing. Well, and the two of them got free and they had nothing. The aunts lived on a small pension, it was all such an awful life. I say: maybe I had it better in prison, at least they clothed me, even if it was their awful uniform, at least one was kind of sheltered there..."

(Q: "Was there any kind of disciplinary action, like correctional punishment in the men's camps?") "I can tell you that, it was this same warden Pešek who picked me out once, that I'd carry food to the dark room. In Pankrác. So he picked me out, and I can tell you, it was something all right. We went - I don't really know which way he took me, there were stairs down, it was dark, he opened a door and there was a woman there, completely naked, kind of black hair, inside the cell, I just got a glance - a hole in the floor for a toilet, no bed, nothing, and she completely naked. That was in the winter. I had brought her a bowl of soup, so I passed it to her and we left. And that time I said to myself: I mustn't provoke Pešek. Because if he puts me down here, I'll go crazy. And then we saw her when they took her up some two weeks later, they were carrying her on a stretcher, along the corridor. I recognised her by her hair, but she was a ruined person. I reckoned that in that dark room... with no windows, nothing. Terrible. I said to myself: No, I couldn't take that. And I got real frightened of Pešek. And you see, nothing happened to him either. And they told me later on that this woman had been pregnant, and that they had forced her down there in such a way that she lost her child in the dark room."

"Usually they were village girls. I think they were the type that didn't want to work, like in their village. Because they weren't doing anything in the centre. They stood and aped, if you excuse the word. Didn't do a thing, and they were so, well, primitive. When they shot me, they wanted to blame it on me trying to run. And at the time, foreman Štěrbáček stood up for me and said: 'Well you can't do that. The girl's supposed to go home, you can't want her to get another five years for attempting to escape!' And the one warden said: 'Well look, this is a matter of one of our comrades, and Vokálová is dirt-hugging class enemy.' So they would've doomed without a second thought. But the warden's mum (of the one who shot me) came to visit me and she brought me a box of cakes, like, like she was apologising. But for the girl herself to apologise..." (Q: "Did any of them behave nicely to you?") "Yes. In Hradec Králové the head warden, she was an old lady, she was about sixty. She was kind of nice. We used to get together in the evening to do some lovely three-voice singing, and she always said: 'My girls, do stop already, so there's no trouble.' So she was nice to us, yes. And then the one who escorted me, she was quite nice too. The one at Pankrác who brought me some pills, but otherwise..."

"Well, they took us to Block Four, and they put us straight into one cell, my Mum, sister and myself, and they took my brother to the Karlák. We didn't find that out until later, that he was at the Karlák, not at Block Four. And I didn't even know when they brought in Choc, right. But our song was O sole mio. I used to play the piano, I wanted to study at a conservatory, and our song, as in of us two, that was O sole mio. And suddenly, that was sometime after the second of June, at Block Four... It was awful. There were twelve of us, or how many, when they put us there. Twelve women... The smell... The toilet was just this shack, there were all these prostitutes and thieves and everything. One bucket, one basin to wash in. Just terrible. If you come from such luxury. Well, luxury - from a standard. You're used to showering in evening, morning... That was maybe the worst of it. We slept three to a bed and in such a way that two slept one way and the third slept with her head at the others' feet and we had her feet at our heads. And then they started interrogating us, and those were mostly night interrogations. They kept wanting to know where Choc was, and I simply really did not know, because, if they had just thought about it - even if he did have some sort of mission, would he be telling it to a seventeen-year-old girl?" (Q: "How old was he?") "Twenty-five. Twenty-three. He was born 1925, so he was twenty-three at the time." (Q: "How long did you stay in Pankrác?") "Well, in Bartholomew Street... We, I want to tell you this, our song was O sole mio, suddenly this one night we're listening. We used to secretly open up our ventilator during the evenings, and suddenly we hear someone whistling O sole mio. So I knew he was there. And then we kept in touch using songs, every evening. It was like... Not really that we would send messages like that, but one evening, that was about a quarter year later, some three months, and he called out: 'Evey, you're all going home on Friday. I signed everything they gave me, you're all going home.' Well, because it was a huge number of people who had been involved with him that they had gathered up. I don't know, they must've followed them from the borders. They must've tracked them from the moment they crossed the borders."