Miroslav Prokeš

“I nabbed half a pallet of paper from the paper works in Svit, Otrokovice, which was used to make shoe boxes, and when we drove to the printing shop in Louky, I took it with me in the lorry. I came to the man who cut the paper. I told him to cut it into A4 sheets for me and gave him half a litre of borovička [juniper brandy, a traditional Slovak liquor - trans.]. He asked me what I wanted it for, and I said for rabbit hutches. I had a pallet of cut paper. Or they’d throw out old, expired paper in firms. I knew they’d be throwing it three quintals of A4 paper and that it would be good printing material. I called [Vladimír] Trlida and asked him where I should take it to. I brought it there and we shifted it off. I didn’t want to know where it was.”

“People knew about it. The cops chucked the folders into a pulper. A pulper is a ten-or-so-metre-long cylinder with a stream of water inside. You throw paper into it, which dissolves and is pulverised by a big cogwheel, producing a pulp that is extruded into a drum. From there it goes on to a kind of warm belt, where it dries. And it becomes paper and is pressed. There was someone there almost all the time. It’s still used to shred documents even today. I think they started doing it the week after the demonstration in Letná. I guess they decided they wouldn’t get through it this time and that they couldn’t lie their way through, so better to destroy it. They crammed it into the thing. The boys said they also burnt some things, but burning is more visible. They used to come there before as well, in eighty-six, eighty-seven, but whereas they’d previously come about twice a year, now they were at it every other day.”