Otto Wagner

"Today, I would think of it as a bit hasty. Back then, it was more or less a symbol of anti-communist activity. There were four of us in total and two more, who were outside, who got together and started writing the news as broadcast by the individual radio stations. As I had a perfect command of German at the time, I caught German news, translated them into Czech, and we reproduced them using a typewriter. This was not only my job, it was also the work of the others, who in turn tuned to for example “London calling” and so on. From this we made such summaries, we wrote, let us say, from each report, not every day, of course, we wrote about 15 to 20 letters. And we carried these and put them in the communists' mailboxes."

"I'll tell you something. When they arrested me, they took me to the police station in Budějovice, there the policeman slapped me and took me to a cell. There were already two lying on a wooden bed, nothing more, just bare boards. They were wrapped in a carpet. I I got there, greeted them, looked in the corner, and there I saw another pile of carpets. I threw it on the rug and stretched out. The policeman was standing there looking solemn like an antique pillar, looking at me and saying: 'How many times have you been locked up?' I said: 'First time now, so what?' You know, I have never worried about anything, not even transferring worries into the future. Once it happened, somehow it ended, I get rid of it. But to worry about it, no way. And it's possible that despite all the vicissitudes I've had in my life, I managed to get over it easily."