Petr Švestka

“When I was in custody in Litoměřice, we read book. There was a lot of illegal literature – from Škvorecký to Polish translations of books I even didn’t know. Great stuff. Well, I guess this was the case of darkness under the lamp. Perhaps they thought there could be nothing wrong in a communist prison and no-one checked. At the time the normal libraries were being destroyed, they had fantastic books in prison libraries.”

“One of my first graphic jobs was an ID card I made for Jindra. Applied art, much hand work. I changed the photo and imitated the stamp by a screwdriver. Me and Jindra we went to Brno to see Carol. I went to collect her. Immediately we realised that we were being followed by the police. It was like in a James Bond film. We boarded a trolley-bus, a cop behind us. In the last moment we got off and he remained inside. We thought we lost them but there were more.”

“The prison wardens had bonuses for exceeding the norms so that they motivated us. They told us that if we do ten percent of pigs more, we’ll get a beer after the work. The prisoners were naturally enthusiastic: ‘Beer! Beer!’ And everybody worked like crazy. But this led to norms being raised. When I started we did 250 pigs and 80 cows a day. When I was leaving the norm was twice as high.”