Marie Klusáčková

“My background report didn’t matter in the lower years. But then at grammar school, the old professors were gradually forced out. The only ones who remained were those who taught mathematics, physics, or chemistry, in other words, subjects that you couldn’t really stick ideology in much. And for history, Czech, and civic education they brought in new professors, Communists of course. We were given a young class teacher, hardly out of school, and he was a dreadful Communist. He saw my background report, he didn’t like me much, and he kept giving me various tasks, kept trying to get me involved. Then I graduated, and my parents were acquainted with the professors who had had to leave, and they told them that I wouldn’t receive recommendation to study at university. So I didn’t even apply, so I wouldn’t give them the joy of denying it... Then I undertook an undergraduate course, for a nurse, which I completed here in Brno.”

“After some years they fired my father from the Vsetín Arms Works, we had to leave our factory flat and move somewhere else. We were constantly under the attention [of State Security - ed.] because when my parents came to visit me or went somewhere else, Mum would give the keys to the neighbour, to water the flowers. She was a good woman, but I guess her husband was in State Security. Mum always locked everything, handed over the keys... And then Mum told me she knew they’d rummaged through her writing desk. So I guess we were under constant surveillance.”