"Every time we asked why dad wasn't home with us, we were told that he didn't do anything, that he was actually suffering for all of us. That he wanted us to have a good time here again. We always whispered that he must have killed somebody, or that he stole something big, some bank or something, well, that's why when he came back we were afraid he was some kind of criminal. Because back then there were these movies about World War II, and the killing and the guns and the tanks. So we thought, "Dad must have killed somebody. And not just one, but a lot of people."
"He came back as a very wrecked man, after that trip. He said there was just one big room in that farmhouse where there was a stove, a huge table where they ate, pictures painted on the wall, cups, shelves. There was the warmth of home. My mother, who baked homemade bread, sliced it, and she always crossed herself before she did that, that loaf of bread was crossed. Some of those holy pictures. Suddenly he came there after all those fifty years, more? Something like that. So it was all broken and there were naked women hanging on the walls, dirty writing scrawled all over the walls, nothing there. The floor, which they said used to be larch, and the beautiful tables that they made themselves, the carved wood things, so there was nothing. So he was unhappy about that and then he had a heart attack."
"I came to Sweden as a student. And when I... Yeah, they already called me to Leninka when I went there, so they were hinting at something. I was like surprised, like really surprised. Well, I wanted to leave so I didn't promise anything. When I came back they invited me again and then they advised me that when they were going to question me that I should keep drumming on the table, that they had a recording there, so that I should interrupt them so that they wouldn't hear it. The policeman said to me, 'Stop it already!' And I was like, 'I'm so nervous, I can't.' And I kept drumming on the table with both hands like that. Well, it was pretty gross, because he... I've been invited there a few times... He knew all the postcards I got after that, who I met, so he knew all the time who wrote me, some letters, they knew everything!"
"It was known a few days in advance, but we didn't see it as kids. It was cold and we were sledging somehow, and then mom came home early from work and - I have a surprise for you! We thought maybe she had something good for us, because chocolate, it was, oh, unimaginable goodness, it was only ever for Christmas or something. So we kept guessing what she had for us and she said dad was back. He was sitting in the room. There was a strange man. He was bearded, he had some ugly clothes and he smelled. But in that... Like a warehouse, or how should I put it... It smells like a cowshed or a farm or manure, but that wasn't it. It was a kind of smell like... Now I can... From the prison or something. We were so scared of him. He had his arms open and he wanted us to kiss him. We just didn't know what kind of guy he was. We were scared of him. I was older, so I went first and I backed away again, and my brother... He wanted to hug us and we started crying. We were more and more scared of him. Then he gave us a hidding. So bad! That was such a beating. His nerves were shattered, well."
Pavla Dostálová, maiden name Hažmuková, was born on 27 June 1949 in Šlapanice near Brno into a family of a farmer and a teacher. Her father, František Hažmuk, became a victim in 1950 in a mock trial of Czechoslovak People‘s Party officials in Jihlava and spent five years in labour camps, including in the Jáchymov region. In 1951, Pavla Dostálová was forcibly evicted from her apartment in Jihlava with her mother and younger brother, and her father‘s farm in Vysoké Studnice was expropriated by the state for failure to deliver supplies. For the first five years they lived without their father in Šlapanice and every day they were made to feel that they belonged to the margins of society. František Hažmuka was paroled in 1955 and worked as a labourer for the rest of his life. In 1963 the family moved to Brno. In the more relaxed conditions of the late 1960s, Pavla Dostalova managed to graduate from the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Agriculture in Brno and worked in her field of study all her life. She married and raised two children. Her father was fully rehabilitated in 1990. In 2023 Pavla Dostálová was living in Brno.
