Marta Laudátová

“Dad was teaching in Uherský Brod and they came for him at noon on 10 January and took him away. They first took him to his dwelling and then to Uherské Hradiště. He was among the very first. There was the ambitious Ludvík Hlavačka, he was... really... he must have been very smart but he used it to evil ends. He devised the electricity torture. The word got out later and inspectors came from Brno to ask what had happened. They got an explanation of how the prisoners were tortured, what they did to them... First, when they wanted to hear a confession, they beat them on the soles on their feet, and when that did not help, they introduced electricity in their shoes. They had a rheostat or what, connected to electricity, with two wires or pieces of tin, and they put that in their shoes and tortured them. When they didn’t like the answer they turned it on. My dad said it was so terrible he was praying to God to die. It was horrible, the pain was excruciating... he remembered it until the end of his life. He could not replace a light bulb – he said it was so horrible that, should hell be like that, it would be really horrible.”

“Thinking back, I realise I really have to be immensely grateful to my mum and grandma who raised us. First, they did not foster any hate in us towards anyone. We prayed for dad every day, we had is image and mum would always tell us, reassure us that dad did nothing wrong, that he was innocent even though he was in prison. But we saw that the family, a certain part of the family, did not see it that way. ‘If he did not do anything he would not be in prison!’ So we got to see the other side too.” – “On a practical level, or a personal level, you as a child must have missed dad.” – “Luckily, we had uncles who tried to help us, substitute dad and help mum. When she had to go to somewhere, like to court, there was always an aunt or an uncle to go with her. We had a field, we grew potatoes and crops, and we had chickens, a goat and a pig; we tried to be self-sufficient. My grandma was very energetic and clever. My mum had to suffer through it and grandma encouraged us with her energy.”