David Kabzan

“At Bartolomějská street, there were long hallways with doors. Each had an ear drawn on them. Those were the interrogation rooms. It was a narrow, long room, with a window opposite to the door, a table with a typewriter on the right hand side. A policeman in civilian clothes would sit there, taking notes. Next to him, there was Beran’s table – the guy who always questioned me. This guy would ask question and the other one would just take notes, not intervening. A long, narrow room and by the door, there was a tin cupboard, a chair and a bed. This is what any interrogation room that I’d been to looked like. I would sit in the chair, having the bed and the cupboard next to me. The interrogator would always walk by me, between the chair and the bed. I think the point was to ask questions behind my back. He would always walk towards the door, ask questions there while I wasn’t allowed to turn around. It was a psychological game of theirs. At the time of the biggest interrogation, Václav Havel was already arrested and I was about to be the star witness in his process, though I didn’t know that. In fact, until the last moment, I didn’t know what they wanted to hear from me. For a while, it appeared just like any other interrogation that I’d been to. But suddenly, as Beran stood behind my back, he pulled out his baton and hit the tin cupboard just above my head with all his force. I remember that at that moment, I lost it. Those were psychological games. Before he hit me, he hit the cupboard. It was the first time he did that. They would also trip my chair or do other things to put me under stress during a normal conversation. Causing a shock, hitting something, tripping the chair, beating the cupboard… One would start stuttering, act differently. That’s what they were after. At that moment, they were able to extract more information.”

“Just before the revolution, my mum moved to Prague and I stayed with her at a lodging house. Suddenly, three Volha cars arrived. I knew that they were after me so I jumped out of the window and ran away. They got mum. She said she didn’t know where I was. I knew this was bad. Instinctively, I knew I had to escape, so I went to Tanvald to the cottage of our friends. I spent about a month there. During that period they detained my whole family and my friends. They claimed that I ran over a pedestrian somewhere in Svitavy. That was quite serious, that would have been attempted murder. But I never drove a car in my life; to this day I don’t have the license. It was absurd. They claimed to have a witness, a lady whom I was supposed to buy window cleaning sheets at. While still at Tanvald, I met Petr Placák who told me that this was a common strategy, to make up a cause for arrest. So I hid in Tanvald. When I returned the next month, it was October or November already. I was summoned because of the claimed car accident and there was about to be a trial. As I walked to the court room at Ovocný trh to testify, a hundred thousand people walked past me to demonstrate. I rang the bell and asked whether I was going to be interrogated. They just laughed and sent me off.”