Jaroslav Režný

“My foreman came to my drawing board and said, ‘There is someone to see you there.’ The visitor was a complete stranger. He said: ‘When your shift is over your foreman will release you. You will walk twenty steps behind me. Do not stop anywhere.’ He just ordered me to do it. I thought, ‘God, what’s up?’ I thought I knew, though, since Milan had told me. The guy put me in a little chamber. Just a desk, windows blacked out, and a feeble light bulb.” – “Where was that? What was the building? Where did you go?” – “I know. Of course, you know where the theatre is in Zlín. Club Theatre or what it is called. There were some garages downstairs and the StB were upstairs. They took me there, closed the door and locked it. I heard the key in the lock, and then I sat there for so long. It felt endless. Then a man came and stared me in the eyes. I thought, ‘Idiot, I can stand this.’ It was unpleasant. When he had enough staring, he left. The one who took me there came back. A woman sat by a typewriter, and they interrogated me and took down minutes.”

“So, we little boys started collecting all that ammunition, both used and unused cartridges. I even found a damaged German automatic rifle in the forest behind the hospital; at least I believed it was German – maybe it was other. As a result, I became the commander of the guerrillas for about a week. I had this armband that read, in a wobbly script, ‘Czechoslovak Guerrilla’. I enjoyed playing the game, but it only lasted for about two weeks because boy scouts started marching in Podvesná. They would sing and brother Garlík was blowing a trumpet, a bugle. I loved it so much that I threw my armband away. As for the rifle: a boy in the Sixth Street – we lived on the Eleventh – damaged his hand with some explosive. I don’t know if he lost his fingers completely or was just badly hurt, but our parents and neighbours raided our boys’ belongings and took everything, just everything. They took it all away, and our beautiful game was over.”