"So the concern was mostly, of course, wasn't it. Especially those who organized it in some way, the priests, the Salesian priests. We were kind of like generous. Then we were the ones who lived on Yugoslavian Partisans, and across the street from us, across the windows, was the district party committee. So we used to say that it was the darkest under the candlestick. Well, it couldn't be missed when there were just, I don't know, twenty pairs of shoes in the hallway, men's shoes. So if you had everything like that... you wouldn't do anything, you'd have your butt cheeks pulled up all the time. So it was kind of going on. It rotated around the flats, of course. But in our house it was quite a bit - and that was actually the reason why I suddenly found myself going from that so-called little seminary or little theology to just listening to lectures from guys who were preparing for the priesthood, right."
"Actually, I supplied the barracks with what I had collected in Prague, piles of leaflets and all that, and then of course I communicated my impressions of what I had experienced there, because I had the misfortune to be on the Jirásek Bridge somewhere, walking towards Smichov, and I just heard a kind of clapping. He just drove there with some armoured vehicle - and now he was like shooting at these people who were on the bridge, yeah. So on the other sidewalk, there I saw that a man just fell. I don't know if it was a woman or a man. I don't know. I was so freaked out that I was running from about a third of the Jirásek Bridge towards Smichov. There I ran into a building and ended up in the basement, heart in my throat, right. And there were more people like that running around, yeah. So that was an incident that was a bit of a shock to me."
"And next to our battalion there was an ammunition depot in the woods - and of course the ammunition depot was the key to those Russians. So they captured it. Paratroopers parachuted in thinking that we were the ammunition depot. So they pulled us out there, we thought it was some kind of fun, didn't we. But so we were all pulled out into that corridor and now they were flying in there with these automatics. They were these, we called them beret men, they had these berets, but they were huge, and now these white and green striped shirts, just, well... And now they rampaged like that for two or three hours, and then some commander came and something, called them off and they left. Then me and the boys turned on the radio and then we heard all this stuff."
"We had school, some classes in the morning and then in the afternoon there were either some workshops, PE and things like that - like not intellectual. Now a person in between morning and afternoon classes, sometimes yeah, so we'd go with the boys to play football, there in the dugout. There was cinder, well, so you'd come, we'd come to school, I wasn't alone, so my feet were dirty with cinder. And we came to gym class, and this comrade Ponomarev took me, and I had to take off my gym shoes so that you could see the difference between the dirt and the clean feet. And he took me from class to class, which were occupied, they weren't all occupied. And he would always put me on the step in front of the class and say, 'Look at that cattle, what legs he has, and he's going to altar!' That's how he used to lead me around like a bear."
Štěpán Faber was born on 13 October 1947 in Prague. His father, Karel Faber, worked as a surveyor and held the post of ministerial councillor just after the Second World War. After February 1948, he left this later nomenclature position and returned to his original profession. His mother Aloisie, née Rudyšová, was a housewife. The family never sympathized with the communist regime, but at the same time was deeply religious. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Fabers became part of a community that supported persecuted clergymen returning from prison. Because of these circumstances, Stephen Faber had problems in school. Poor grades made it impossible for the witness and his three brothers to attend high school. Štěpán Faber did not finish his studies until later. Štěpán Faber lived through the turbulent year of 1968 in the army. He learned about the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in a very unusual way: the invaders raided the barracks thinking they were occupying a nearby ammunition depot. After leaving for civilian life, he studied at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, while working for the Regional Design Institute in the studio of architect Václav Hilský. He married in 1973 and had three children with his wife Iva. As the children grew up, they wanted to give them a good theological education. Štěpán Faber therefore decided to study religion within the underground church. At the same time, he led secret catechism circles for children and contributed to the samizdat periodical Čtení do krosny. Thanks to these activities, he had the opportunity to get to know personally important spiritual leaders such as Štěpán Trochta, Josef Zvěřina and František Tomášek. These activities did not escape the attention of State Security, and in the late 1980s the witness was listed in the volumes as a person under investigation. After the fall of the totalitarian regime, he began working for the Prague Archbishopric, and in the 1990s he was ordained a deacon. For a number of years he worked as a hospital chaplain. The departure of his wife and his mission as a chaplain led him to a new stage in his life. In June 2016, Stephen Faber was ordained a priest. In 2024, he served as acting pastor in Hostivice.
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