Bedřich Koutný

“They had a permit to search through the whole apartment as well as the basement. They showed it to me and I said: ‘What can I do, just carry out your duty.’ They searched through the whole apartment. I had no idea that in the meantime my father who had a small distillery, distilled some calvados there during my business trip. It was a kettle with some tubes, a cooling device and so on; he kept it in the laundry room. When I came to tell him that they were about to search the basement, the poor man almost had a heart attack, he knew they would find it. They had spent an hour in the laundry room, going through shelves, looking for documents… Then they came to the machine and said: ‘And what is this? Fuck, boys, this is distillery, put out your cigarettes, quick!’ So after an hour they found out about this illegal distillery. That was a great success for them, of course, finding at least something, discovering this distillery.”

“At that time, the State Security made plans with the Czechoslovak Television to uncover an anti-state center in Zlín. They would record it all and make a deterring example of it for the youth throughout the country. We were naturally ready for it because at least a month earlier they pulled off surveillance officials from the whole country. There were some thirty active dissidents in Zlín – people who participated in samizdat, who were politically involved, including Czech-Polish solidarity. We collaborated with the Poles in information exchange. A lot of people brought our samizdat to out Polish friends and returned with information on what was going on in their country. In 1985 this monstrous crackdown was being prepared. Each of us around twenty-five people were followed by three vehicles with three people in each.”