“We went on holiday in Italy with an exit permit, then we carried on to Yugoslavia. On the way back my husband took me and our son Tomáš to some friends in Studenberg near Graz. He was supposed to come pick us up on 21 August 1968. The day before he slept over at some relatives in Austria, and he phoned me the following morning. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said. I asked: ‘Who died?’ He said that ‘the Russians have come to Prague with tanks.’ We knew we wouldn’t go back to Czechoslovakia. We didn’t want our fourteen-year-old son to have to go through what I had. We left everything in our flat in Vyšehrad. The Swiss consulate was offering work to citizens of Czechoslovakia who wanted to emigrate. Ota went to the embassy, he spoke excellent German because his parents spoke German. He was employed by a company called Sulzer in Winterthur. We drove to Switzerland in our small Fiat. At first we lived in a gym hall in Chur. While still in Vienna I visited the chairman of the Austrian tennis and hockey department, Wasservogel. He wrote me a letter of recommendation to the tennis association. I didn’t come to Switzerland as a complete stranger.”
“People in the Bušek and Lindner group worked in export firms. They were older than I was. They were trying to do something against the Communists. I was the young one, I didn’t know much about it. Only that my boyfriend Pravdoslav Valenta had procured seed inspection permits from the Ministry of Agriculture for Karel Bušek and Ladislav Lindner, so they could enter the border region. He got twenty years for that. I had seem Karel Bušek a few times. He wanted a free Czechoslovakia. We all did.”
“Friends of Ladislav Husák told his father - besides when the convicts would have their appeal - also when they would be taken back from Prague to Pilsen, to Bory. We booked a seat in the train next to them. It was in winter, so the guards had fur coats, and they stood around us in such a way that we could go see the boys. There was a cop on watch at the toilet, but the guards knew that. We even gave them some food - and their rations soon flew out of the window. Those were fantastic prison guards. But while at the station, we had to pretend we didn’t know them. They told us which pub to go to, that they’d call us to say if the food had made them sick. Slávek Valenta escaped from Jáchymov with one other friend from the group that had been convicted in the Lindner-Bušek case. The other man was married and had a child. They were on the run for two or three days. When they heard dogs barking, Slávek supposedly told him to run, that he’d delay them. He described to me that it was nothing pleasant to have a dog locked on to your neck. They upped his sentence by two years for that escape. From twenty years to twenty-two.”
Zdena Machová, née Czechmanová, was born on 6 April 1931 in Prague. She lived with her parents in Karlín. Until 1945 she attended the Russian Grammar School in Prague 4, which was located in the current building of the grammar school on Na Vítězné pláni. She was registered as a Russian, and she was to be deported to the Soviet Union like her classmate. Luckily, the two girls remained in Czechoslovakia. After World War II the witness was denied grammar school studies. She attended a municipal (upper primary) school instead, and in 1946 she successfully applied to the Business Academy in Masná Street, which she graduated from in 1948. Although she was a successful tennis player who also did professional alpine skying, she was barred from becoming a recognised sports figure because of her romantic attachment. Her boyfriend Pravdoslav Valenta was part of the espionage group of Bušek and Lindner, and he was sent to prison in 1949. Zdena Czechmanová was persecuted by the regime. In 1952 she met Otakar Mach, and the two married that same year. She gave birth to a son, Tomáš. In 1968 the family went on holiday in Italy and thence to Yugoslavia. On the way back they stopped by some friends in Austria. Zdena Machová stayed there with her son, and Otakar Mach was to pick them up on 21 August 1968. However, when the Warsaw Pact armies invaded Czechoslovakia, they decided not to return. They emigrated to Switzerland and settled down to live and work in Winterthur. The witness became the second certified Swiss tennis coach. She taught physical education at a grammar school (Kanton Schule; 1969-1970) and subsequently at a medical school (Krankenpflegeschule; 1969-2005). She lived in Winterthur until 2005, when she moved back to Prague. Zdena Machová died in January 2021.
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