Marie Fritschová

"Then it started to boil a bit here in Polička. It was already crowded at that time and the local Civic Forum was already starting to be established here. There was the latter mayor, Mr Skalnik, the mayor Jan Eldman for the People's Party. We met on the square. It was a bit improvised at the savings bank, because they didn't have as much opportunity as in Prague, so only through a megaphone, but it was interesting that the communist papals were hidden in the then National Committee and were there in the dark and staring out the windows. We said, "Jesus, they're behind the window over there! Come with us! Come here! What are you afraid of?" They didn't know which one was beating obviously, they didn't know what it would be like, so it started in that Polička, then in those factories or even in the then agricultural cooperative, it was surprisingly boiling. My friend worked there back then, she said, it was tough, they needed to take down the papals who were bothering them there. In the hospital, there was absolutely nothing going on there, we normally went to work there. "

"Mom already knew, I didn't know yet. I said, 'Mom, why isn't Dad home?' And she always cried and didn't say why. Then I found out he wouldn't come back, he was just locked up I don't know exactly how she said it, she just said he won't come back. Someone even stole the salaries of the guys who were there, so ... If people hadn't been collected money for us back then, we would die from hunger, excuse my French, because my mother didn't have any money. I remember how one citizen of Kamenice brought us the money collected from the people. My mother did not want to take them, but he said, Mrs Fritsch please take them, you have small children, Josef is imprisoned, you need some money to live."

"So here, as there is now a 'circle' in Polička, we turned the pointers there. They were supposed to go to 'Havlbrod', or somewhere. And the boys from Policka, I don't know who exactly did that, turned the pointers and they ended up behind Policka, at Bystra, the Poles. And our boys were urging young people there back then, my mother didn't want to let me go, she said, 'They'll kill you, you're not going anywhere!' She was completely paralysed by fear, but I didn't miss it, being there when they were changing the pointers. And the boys followed them, the Poles, and they stood there helplessly, and the boys agreed and said, 'What have we done to you to attack us like that?" Something like that. And the Poles were so shocked, that they begged the Czech boys for forgiveness, that they didn't know where they are being sent. They said there was alarm and they needed to board the cars and didn't know where they are going."

"Because my dad was locked up in 1949." - "Right after the war?" - "Right from the start. Because there was such a trouble with the then Doyen of Polka Danek. He was caught by the Russians on the border with Austria, he wanted to take a escape to Rome. And there he was caught and brought back to Polička in handcuffs. People in the village revolted, so he was here for a while before he was arrested, before he was taken away, because he read Cardinal Beran's pastoral letter, and it was forbidden to read, and he read it from the pulpit. So it was a huge problem. The church choir was rehearsing with the Madera and suddenly someone broke into the course and said: 'You are praying here and the doyen is being locked down!' Well, all the guys and everyone who could went down, and there was a riot in the village, demonstrations, and guys turned the [STB's] car on its roof. It ended up with imprisonment of the leaders, including my father. "

"He didn't like to talk about it when he came back after that year. The guard was always someone who was mentally ... a moron. They weren't normal people, a normal person couldn't do that. I say, they were morons they just put together. They didn't care, so he remembered, for example, that on one Good Friday they were given the task of carrying some electric poles on their backs, as if Jesus was carrying the cross, and he wasn't physically fit, he was more fragile, so his health was severely negatively impacted."