Milan Skácel

"We had a radio studio 3, which broadcast on short waves. Our radio could be heard as far as in Bulgaria. We were receiving broadcasting from England on our communication devices. Jana, who was a line worker operating the teletype, was translating it from English. We were able to inform everybody around using the short wave frequency. All these sins, Scouting included, were the reasons for our dismissal from the factory and from our jobs; luckily Jana was spared. The children didn’t get admitted to schools. It was not a good time. But had the conditions in the 1970s been like those in the 1950s, I would have spent some years behind the bars for it. And I wouldn’t have been alone."

"The comrades arrested Pavel in 1948 during some student demonstration. He spent some fifteen years in the labour camp in Jáchymov. Recently he received the doctor honoris causa degree in law. He is a great and honest man. He had taken upon himself a penalty which was intended for somebody else who had a wife and family. All this time, his girlfriend had been faithfully waiting for him and she then married him. Although they expected that they wouldn't be able to have children, because Pavel had worked in the uranium mines Jáchymov, they had three beautiful boys."

"Šark-Šandera, the correspondent for the Hradec region, came to see us. He was entrusted with leading a nursing school. He had joined the Party shortly before, because as a reasonable man he wanted to support the Party in its revival process. He had a staunch communist in his school, the school caretaker. In 1970, the band decided not to surrender their instruments to the communists. Since Šark was a former regional correspondent, they took the instruments to his school and asked him to keep them there. Šark had played with the band when he was a student. They hid the instruments by walling them up in the school wall. Thanks to his help, the band had their instruments available immediately after the Velvet revolution."

"When we went for a camp, we had to take food stamps with us in order to get our ration of groceries. For example, we could have one loaf of white bread per month. Without the food stamps, the camp leaders wouldn’t be able to get any food. Mom had to cut off an appropriate number of food stamps which we used to buy food. The grocer had to know for how long we would stay there and how much we would consume, because normally he was getting only limited supply for the village. It was not like today when you get whatever you want. People didn’t have money after the war."