Stanislav Antonín Zábranský

“Back then, although I don’t know how it worked in other companies, but in Tesla Rožnov it was common that bosses kept files on their employees. And when I started working under Malík, it was the famous Black book. Everyone knew that Malík had a Black book and that it was a book where he kept information and critical views of his employees. And that he had many informers spread out. Many people writing all kinds of things in the book. To be more specific, when I was working under Malík, some Hasalík, an engineer, was one of the informers. Coincidentally, we became friends and I had a hard time trying to prepare him for college. I tutored him in math. Then he graduated from a college and started worked there as an economist. But he worked for the other side. –Where did these people get such information? They just pretended to be your friends and then informed on you? – We were friends and everything, we shook hands, patted each other on the shoulder like best friends. But they. The kind of information they had, for example, was that I told some political jokes. But everyone knew, you know, everyone knew I was the only technician in the unit who had not joined the Party, that I was against the regime. So I was kind of an easy target.”

“When it was the third year of the parade, there were already ten or twelve of us. And we were interested in and talked about the parade and its content. Every year we tried to boost it with some themes and topics. And it happened in January, while we were traveling, we were cross-country skiing across Javorníky mountain ranges. And then we got on a train, I think it was either in Karolínka or in Nový Hrozenkov, probably in Nový Hrozenkov. And on the way back to Vsetín, in that crowded train, we talked. Us four cross-country skiers talked about the May Day parade. There was a twenty-year-old girl sitting next to us. A beautiful young lady. And she was listening to us with one ear while studying. She was a college student. And about halfway to Vsetín, she approached us and asked: ‘What are you talking about? That’s pretty interesting! What is that parade?’ And we explained it to her. We told her about the parade and why we do it. And everyone around listened to it. But she reacted directly. She said: ‘Well, and if I went with you, would you take me in?’ And we said: ‘Sure, why not. Give us your address and we’ll call you before the parade.’ And so on. Well, several months had passed and we had almost forgotten it. But couple days prior to the march someone remembered that we had this girl’s address somewhere. And we thought: ‘Okay, so we’ll write her and let her know.’ So we told her like one week prior to the march. We wrote her where and when we would meet, and that if she was interested, she should come. And to our great surprise, when we met at Krhová on our regular assembly point, we saw a girl with a huge bag pack waiting for us. And it was really that girl.”