Zdeněk Fikar

“Someone could reckon, pfff, it was no big deal, they broke some people and bla blah, but if you were under pressure from those interrogations for half a year, say, not knowing what, when, where they’d call on you, where they’d take you to... Dangerous stuff starts happening in your mind, right. You grow afraid. And if it lasts a longer time and you can’t get a job, for instance, you get those scars from it, and those can threaten to damage your psyche.”

“Back in eighth year we already started secretly attending big beat events. You weren’t allowed to, right, at any kind of party, they alůways checked whether you were fifteen or older. And another funny thing was that say on the Střelák [Střelecký Island - trans.], they had these afternoon tea-dance parties. And all the young people wanted to go there, but the boys were not allowed to wear jeans, they had to wear Tesil trousers [a type of polyester fabric typical for Communist Czechoslovakia - trans.], which were ironed with a crease. And if you didn’t have creased trousers, they wouldn’t let you in.”