Jana Mičánková

"If I'd kept my mouth shut... I was very talkative, though. And when the teacher in the first grade asked us to tell everyone who we were, what our names were and where we lived, I said my name was Janička Vovsová, I lived in Břevnov and we had a villa, but we didn't have it anymore because the communists took it away from us, and I told the story. And the teacher immediately gave me an envelope when we were going home to tell my mother to come. So my mother came. And she was quite a good teacher, because she told my mother, 'I don't know who I have in that class, she can't talk like that.' And so again, I became the other extreme and I tried to be a communist. So, for example, when I went to buy cigarettes in the newsagent's to show that I was a communist, well, I would say, 'Red Law, the biggest and most read' - for nothing, just so that the newsagent would know that I would save my family."

"One day Grandpa was taking a bath, and someone was madly ringing the doorbell, so Mom went to open the door, and there were - I originally said ten guys, but now that I read the verdict, there were twelve - they came running to take Grandpa away. I was a little girl, four years old, so what could I do, so [I was shouting]: 'I won't give Rudla, I won't give Rudla!' I grabbed him around the neck and I said I wouldn't give him. And this one State Security man pushed my mother and me away and said: 'End of the theatre, and let's go.' Grandpa said he would dress up: 'No, come in your dressing gown, we'll give you clothes.' It was a semi-detached house. One half was Grandma's sisters and the other half was Grandma and Grandpa. Well, and because we had the phone, like I said, we had to call everybody. And here we had the advantage that when somebody called for Aunt Zelenková, we would knock on the wall and she would come to the phone, and when it was for her daughters, it was more [knocking], some codes like that. Well, and one daughter came over to borrow an electric iron because she was going to some dance course or something. But because the secret ones were there, they wouldn't let her out, she was already locked in with us. And my aunt had been thinking it was a long time that she wasn´t coming back go, so she knocked on the wall for her to go home. And now they got alerted, the secret ones. A: "What's that and who's knocking? It's a code...' And they started looking again. Mummy said: 'No, it's me and Auntie knocking for her daughter to go home.' - 'So knock back.' So Mummy knocked, but the daughter had to stay there. Soon the aunt knocked again, and again nothing. So the younger girl came to get her, and she was trapped as well . Finally the aunt came and they all stayed there till morning, with the secret ones. No one was allowed to move, if anyone wanted to go to the bathroom, they had to leave the door open. Just like they were crazy."