Elena Schmidtová

“We were writing an introduction for my diploma thesis. My mother came to my room and said: ‘Aca,’ I have already told you that they used to call me Aca at home, ‘two men are searching for you.’ And I got it, I felt embarrassed that it was at my friend’s house and I went downstairs, left my bag there, but of course, later they forced me to go up and take it with me. Well, when I came downstairs, I asked them who they were and they showed me their certificates, proved that they were the State Security members. They took me to their car and drove me to Špitálska Street, where the remand centre called At Two Lions was located. I was photographed and fingerprinted there. I had golden earrings, ring and probably wristwatch, simply said, they took everything and never gave it back to me. So I said to myself: ‘Now I am in it. I am already involved.’ I can say I was prepared for it somehow, yes, I really was. I convinced myself that it would have been mercy of God, if they had nabbed me. And at night they transported me from Špitálska Street to the district prison. They put me to the cell with two other women. I used to imagine prison like a cellar, but it was a normal room where only the window was high and straw mattresses were on the floor.”

“Well, I was in Bratislava. That bully urged me to sign the untruthful records so much that I became really raving. I had a kind of inner cue; it was for the Church, you know, it’s embarrassing to talk about it, I thought that if I had signed the record, devil would have taken us to hell. But the suffering was for the Church. So they probably don’t point at that record from Bratislava, because it’s visible there, I mean on my handwriting, that indeed I wasn’t sane when I was signing it. Under the influence of all the hallucinations and delusions I didn’t perceive reality at all and I haven’t told it to anybody, that I did it for the Church. But since that time the main incentive in my entire life has been the Church indeed. And I was so elated thanks to our last popes that I considered it to be too big reward for me, you know, firstly the council and then… Objectively speaking it was a horrible unfairness and malicious perversion of facts. Personally I took it as my duty to suffer for the Church. And I never regretted it, quite the contrary I thank God for everything.”

“I still thank God for everything. After all, every negative event had some positive influence on me. It was really unbelievable that when somebody tried to hurt me, he actually did me good. In prison I realised who communists were and how they could hate and treat people and the like. I would have never believed it, if I hadn’t met those precious people from Košice. Then I was so enthusiastic about the resurgence of the Church, about living in accordance with the Holy Bible, and about an engagement for the Kingdom of Christ in general. I could really thank for everything because even though somebody didn’t wish me any good, it ended up well for me.”

“We lived at my grandmother’s from my mother’s side. She set an example for me by her faith and trust in God and by her really sound Christian life. And my father, who usually led conversation with her, mainly before elections, he was zealous for social justice. I can say that back then the village of Krompachy was called “valley of hunger”. Later people used to call it red Krompachy, because there was a mine in Slovinky and a copper processing plant in Krompachy. And it was interconnected somehow. In Slovinky miners often died of silicosis and their children were forced to beg for food. It influenced me a lot because my mother used to give them some bread at the door. You know, we used to have it always at home and my father called those children in and asked them about their parents, their occupations and then he usually went to see the sick ones. Thus my father was a good example of a man with real social consciousness and he considered it as some fight for social justice. Even though he wasn’t well educated, he was very intelligent and he never feared to raise his voice against injustice.”

“Some people had already been imprisoned. Actually I mean professor Šmalík and Silvo Krčméry from Bratislava. So I supposed somehow that I would be the next, because I used to organize various, even underground gatherings, meetings at the faculty, religious retreats at some disposed families and things like that. I was fully engaged in various activities also in my hometown.”