Miloslav Bulva

"What I was interested about was the kind of communication between each cell: there were flushing toilets and if you drained all the left over water from the toilet by using the cloth then you were able to talk to the cell above and below yours if they did the same with the toilet. There was a time set up in advance for this occasion, so we knew they will be ready. That’s how we talked to each other. The warders knew about it and maybe they have even listened to our conversation using some toilet, I don’t know, but maybe they really have."

"When we arrived, we were bald, therefore we have been taken for some kind of outcasts among the other prisoners, because in Zámrsk prison only prisoners who ran away used to be bald. The second or third day they sent us to work to shave the turnip. And since we have been so starved from the previous Chrudim town prison, we have cut some turnip for us too and ate it. We must have worked although our bodies weakened due to an insufficient meal servings wouldn’t allow us to even cut the turnip."

"We have come together few times and discussed what should be done or what we could do and finally we have decided to produce and to spread the flyers. We wanted to post them up on certain places of Litomyšl town and we have also thought about spreading them among people. At the time of making and printing of the flyers I was suffering the pneumonia, therefore I couldn’t participate even on the distribution of them ant that was probably the reason why I have been sentenced to only one year in prison later. Later on I saw the flyer and I also had it with me for some time. We kept handing it over so it wouldn’t stay on one place. It included the speech of the President Edward Beneš from the English radio. Above others he has highlighted the urge of fight against the communist regime just like our fathers used to fight against the Nazism."

"I didn’t know the two other men who accompanied me in the Pardubice town arrest where I spent one month. Therefore I couldn’t to prove the length of the stay there later on when I was applying for the rehabilitation. I didn’t really mind at the beginning, because it would increase my pension by only 15 Czech crowns. But then they have changed the law in 2005 or 2006, which would pay 2500 Czech crowns each month to all former political prisoners, but the only condition was to prove that you have spent at least one year in the prison. And I’m short just that one month. I have turned my case down to curt, but I have lost the case, so I don’t have any 2500 Czech crowns. Today I have pension of 9400 Czech crowns which is the average of pension these days. I would have to provide the evidence of my former prison - mates. But I didn’t know them. They must be death by now, because when we were in the prison they were already fifty years old. The StB (former communist secret police) doesn’t exist anymore and that’s how I have missed my chance for additional 2500 crowns each month with my pension. I’m very upset about the way the justice treaded me like."