Jan Wallstein

"When I was working with the preservationists, we had a job to do in Jičín, where the court was moved from Hořice in Podkrkonoší, where my adoption had been carried out. I went there to have a look at the documents regarding my adoption, and I found one document that clearly showed that in 1952 my permanent residence in Peiskretscham, today’s Pyskowice, was cancelled. So the communists had let me be adopted by people who knew they were moving me two to three hundred kilometers away from where I lived. They let me live with a family that had nothing to do with me. They simply took me away. And then I was unsatisfactory to them. When I found all this out, I started, even if it doesn't sound very nice, to hate the communists.”

"I finished eighth grade and started studying at a stonemasonry school. During the first year I was so indignant that I wanted to go back to the children's home, because my step-father was a former member of the National Security Corps and had various policing tricks up his sleave. I said that I either wanted to leave, or go study and live in a boarding school. So I lived in a boarding school for practically the entire three remaining years – the second, third, fourth grade before graduating. I used to visit them once a week to get clean socks, clean underwear and a clean shirt. That was all. I was given very little food, even if I refused to eat, the pantry would be locked for me. So if I didn't want to eat, they would say: 'Go ahead and be hungry.' Such were their manners. At the age of eighteen, when I was at boarding school, I was asked if I agreed to the annulment of the adoption. So I said, 'Well why not?'"

"She (his mother) claimed that she looked for me for seven years, but to no avail, and so she gave up. But I think that every mother should not stop searching until she finds her son dead. That's my opinion."