Vojtěch Janoušek

"I remember when my mother came home from her husband's trial, she was upset and said, 'Our lawyer is useless! They gave him ten years! They gave him ten years, and he said: Take it! It was treason. They gave him the lower end of the penalty range.'"

“A Communist Party official lived across the street from us and his two children were about the same age as us. I’m talking about me and my sister Ludmila. Back then, of course, there weren’t as many cars so it was normal to use the streets for playing. And I don’t know how, somehow we started talking to them, who has what, whose brother was taller, and we have this and that… I must’ve been about four years old when I told them: “And we have a rifle at home and we will shoot you!” My dad then had a lot to explain after that. It was true, we did have a rifle, some sort of old shotgun inherited from our grandfather. That’s just for illustration.”

“The visits took place in Milín. Right next to the train station there was this wooden house surrounded by barbed wired fence, in each of the four corners there was a man with a machine gun. They let us inside the wooden house, there was a large room and people pretty much from one single train that arrived maybe even from Slovakia, a special train, and we all waited there for the buses to arrive and bring the prisoners to this visit room. And there would always be a bus, there were visits, the others waited, then another bus, and so on. The seating was done as follows, on a bench there was a convict, a National Security Corps officer, a convict, an officer, a convict and the other side was packed with family members.”

“Since my father had an agricultural background he made this small flowerbed behind the house and planted some flowers there. And when the cop found out he stomped on them, to make him see that he was stomping on them. Father was probably quite offended by that because he never forgot to mention it. And so years went by. He worked in construction, they were building housing estates, it was nicknamed Březové Hory but now I know it’s the housing estate called Zdaboř. It was opposite Svatá Hora and the view was a consolation to him and many others. He also promised that he would go there to have a look at it after getting out.”