Jaroslava Picková

“There was a period when my father arranged boxes with pure uranium ore. There was so much money in it – we could have built golden roads. The boxes were 30 x 30 x 40 cm large. Since uranium has large density, one of those boxes weighed 130 kilograms. He used to sort those into stacks. Every day a fully loaded Tatra 111 truck with a trailer headed towards Russia. Once my father bent down to pick up a box. Suddenly he overheard the voice of my grandma, his mother: ‘Frantiku, Frantiku!’ He thought he was just dreaming. So he bent over again but once again heard this terrible scream. So he stood up and as he did the whole pile behind him fell down. Had he stayed bent down, it would have broken his neck. We then made sense of the story – it was in early November 1954. At that time, one night I and my mum heard a terrible scream of my grandma: ‘Frantiku, Frantiku!’ She was beside herself, banging the door and the window. We ran out and she was saying: ‘Where is Frantik, you don’t want to show him to me!’ She was completely deranged, her eyes wide open, running around the house. We couldn’t understand, why.”

“They had us seated up at the balcony. Suddenly, the door burst open and two armed wardens entered with our dad in between them. He was a skinny, pale man wearing prison clothes. For me, that was a horrible shock. There were sixteen of them convicts including two women. It must have been the worst for the women since both they and their husbands were imprisoned, and as we found later, their children were taken from them. Next to the women were two female guards. Mrs. Hoštová was fifth or sixth in the line. As soon as she and her guards entered, the one to the left scanned the balcony with her stare. As they were walking towards the benches her stare remained targeted at me. I stiffened, not knowing what was happening to me, having goosebumps. Then the chief justice stood up, commenced the trial and asked whether there was any unauthorized person in the room. She jumped up, saying: ‘She’s sitting right there!’ And I got simply expelled. But I did see my dad, even though it was a horrible sight. I don’t know whether he saw me, probably not. But I saw him.”