Josef Daniel Beneš

Fortunately, she was just at home. It was all just a coincidence, but favourable coincidence, that [I asked her] to fax me to that office - in those days you faxed things – an air ticket to Geneva. Which she did. And the next day I went to that office where they had not wanted to sell me the air ticket because I had a Czechoslovak passport, but since it came by telefax, the ticket, they felt obliged to give it to me. So I took it. Then two days later I went to the airport. And then the customs officers were going through my passport. And finally they let me go through. But then it was worse in Budapest, because there was a stopover there, which I didn't even notice that we were going to land in Budapest. There was a big check there. There the man was in plain clothes, he checked all of us, we had to get off the plane. He took my passport, he was alone, fortunately. He took it under his arm like that and gestured me to stand next to him and he didn't want to let me pass. And meanwhile, there were 50 other people behind him. In the meantime, the crew from the plane came and they told him there was a delay, to speed it up a little bit. And at that moment I took my passport from under his arm, I pulled it out - I was acting completely mechanically, like in a dream, I had the impression that it was in a dream, that I was just dreaming - and I took the passport and immediately went with the crew. And he was at a loss, because there were still 50 people behind him and he was alone. So he stayed there, and I went with the crew to the plane, and that's how I got free from the communist yoke definitively."

"And then in Nymburk, in that grammar school building - it's a beautiful building, beautiful architecture of the early 20th century, but in a kind of Renaissance style - there was a group led by some slightly older [boys]. I was 15 years old at the time. They were older boys. And they, when the [Hungarian] revolution was bloodily suppressed and put down, they smashed in the corridors... Maybe you know - or maybe you haven't experienced it, but in all the public corridors there used to be busts of these so-called statesmen: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin everywhere, Gottwald. Stalin may not have been around any more then. But of course Gottwald, Zápotocký, all those bigwigs, and Lenin and Khrushchev had their busts there. And this group just smashed them up one night and threw them in the toilet. And with great student joy they smashed it. When I came in the morning afterwards, it was such a brisk November morning, and the school was completely... Huge excitement, because the secret police were already there, dogs were running around everywhere, around the building, and important searches were being made to find the culprits. The school was upside down. I remember walking down the corridor and in some of the classrooms boys were writing anti-Soviet and anti-communist slogans on the blackboards. It was the year 1956 at the time. I still remember vividly who they were then, they're still alive, they were older than me. We were called into the auditorium where the comrade director gave a speech. That was a terribly tense situation. There were guards, there were secret police. The director, it was an assembly, and he was urging us to confess. But the director, I have to stand in for him a little bit, because I've seen other guys, I mean really evil people, whereas he was a convinced communist and idealist. The police investigated, found nothing. And it was only a few months later that the group was revealed. Several of the young men went to prison and the girls who were with them were all expelledfrom the school and had such a cadre record that they couldn't be admitted anywhere."

"I haven't met them (emigrants) much, no, not at all, I haven't had a chance. Because I was absorbed, or I was busy studying, contacting students, so I basically didn't even have a chance to... I wasn't looking for it. I was afraid a bit, when one grows up in communism, there is always fear, and a lot of fear. Because you grow up, aren't you afraid? Why aren't you afraid? What? Sometimes? But of such specific things, right? But no, while those who grew up in communism have, as always, such a feeling that they have to be careful not to argue somewhere, not to tell the truth somewhere, what they think, they have to be careful about it. This is a difficult thing. So I, when I was in Zurich, always took great care of who I was talking to and how openly. And once, when I... there were two interesting, two funny things. I was once asked to talk about Czechoslovakia, to tell what it looks like there. I'll tell you, I was sweating a little because I was wondering if there was anyone here who would report me. Well, I think I tried to speak honestly, truthfully, but it wasn't... I know I was afraid, I was worried about my future."

I flew away, after much consideration I flew to Bucharest, Romania, because I thought: Romanians had not participates, they had not come to Prague with their army, they had not come to Czechoslovakia. Somehow they resisted. So I thought, maybe the Romanians are reasonable, so I did… And then I managed, well, they didn't want to sell me an air-ticket, they didn't want to. But then the girl who worked in Geneva sent me a fax, it was like a phone, they sent me a ticket, and then I went to the airport with it. As I told you, the plane landed; it made a stopover in Hungary. There was check there again, as it was in all communist states. And then we were standing there, it was the whole plane, everyone had to get out of the plane to go to the building. And there was only one person standing in front of the building, that was my luck, and in civilian clothes, checking our passports. And when it was my turn, fortunately there were about fifty people behind me, when it was my turn, he took the passport, 'And not you.' Like he wanted to detain me. And then the crew came from the plane, and as they grumbled a little at him, they said, 'We're late, hurry up, hurry up!' He lost his readiness. I pulled my green passport out of under his arm like this and I went with the crew, because they were leaving right away. And he was confused, how he did not react, and he still had a lot of people behind him and he was alone. So I left. That's how I got to Geneva."

"In the last year of secondary school, I suddenly decided. I was brought up in the Christian faith, we had had very nice classes and it was interesting. But there was atheism around me, and that in me ... it still affected me. Because when something affects you from the outside, you end up succumbing a little. So I wanted to make myself clear and told to myself: I have to go to theology! And I knew that it was... that faculty of theology existed in Prague, that I had to get there to make it clear to me how it is with Christianity. And when I applied, comrade - do you know what a comrade is? It was said then, it was not said, Mr. Director, it was said Comrade Director... it had to be said. The comrade director, he got scared. And he immediately called me and said, 'Please change it, it doesn't make sense what you wrote here, Faculty of Theology, how do you imagine it? Churches will no longer exist. Do you want to completely ruin your own future? ‘And that's how he persuaded me three times. Why did he persuade me? Because he himself was afraid that the comrades high up, who would say to him, 'How is that possible? How do you do your job raising children when one of your students wants to study theology? 'But I resisted him, he called me to the office three times, and I always thought, I didn't like him, I didn't like him as he was a man who was not of good character, so I always said to myself, 'I'm holding you, I'm holding you, you're scared because I want to go study theology.' So I was a little happy about it. "I have the upper hand over him, over this man."