Hildegarda Vyskočilová

“In the evening my uncle from Znojmo called me and he asked me: ‘What’s happened?’ I replied: ‘What do you mean, what happened?’ ‘Well, I’m listening to Radio Free Europe and they are announcing that they arrested… that František Vyskočil was the spiritual leader of Dubček’s movement.’ I told him: ‘That’s nonsense…’ Just because he sympathized with Dubček, they made him a spiritual leader of Dubček’s movement. He was expelled from the Party: the way it was done was that they either took one’s ID card, or they expelled a person. To be expelled was the worst, because he was then not entitled to anything. He was immediately fired from his work, and he got a job from a friend in Rantířov and he began working in a locksmithery. Agents from the StB were coming every two weeks to ask whom he was meeting and with whom he was speaking…”

“Members of StB Security Police came to me and they told me: ‘You have applied to visit your dad. And so we will allow you to go to visit him, how about that?’ ‘Wow, I would be glad to go, he would be so happy…’ And they said: ‘You could even travel there for free.’ I asked: ‘Oh, really?!’ ‘Yes. But it is a trade-off. You need to do something for us. When you go there, simply look around and you will – you would pass the information to somebody. Look around and you will watch what each of them – how they act, what they tell you, you will be asking these people.’ At that moment I realized that they wanted me to collaborate with them… But I told them: ‘No, I would rather not go there, I don’t even want to go there. I am not able to do that, and I have my children here – I cannot do it and I will not do it.’”