Fridrich Fritz

“After the school-leaving examination, my older daughter wanted to study at the university. We went to Bratislava for the entrance examinations at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. But they didn't admit her. Her father had been imprisoned once, so she was not reliable person, it was obvious. She learnt very well, she had just A grades. And when my younger daughter also passed the school-leaving examination, she wanted to study medicine, so we went to Martin. She was at an entrance exam, too. She had learnt very well, but we again obtained the letter, that they didn't want to accept her. She wouldn’t have taken it so hard if they hadn’t written there that her study results were dissatisfactory at the grammar school. My daughter then cried all the day because she had just A's during her whole study at the grammar school; moreover, she passed the school-leaving exam with the distinction as the best student; she got the diploma and notice that she had good study results at that school as well. She felt bad about it back then and even today she regrets it.”

“…meanwhile, Mrs. Dudinská, you probably have something written about her in those your records, asked me. She arranged crossing the border for chaplain from Levoča. She managed to do that thanks to one agent Palkovič who was executed then. You know, Mrs. Dudinská's mother lived in Prešov and agent Palkovič stayed in her house for some time. So she asked me to deliver some identity cards, actually counterfeit ones that were made by Martin Hritz. I was supposed to deliver them to some priests to Podolínec where they were centralized. She apparently trusted me, so she offered me to do that and this way I was told that she arranged the border crossing for chaplain Precner. And since that time I had known the system and the way how to reach a foreign country…”

“On July 4, they gave their judgement, so the first one was Martin Hritz. I think Hritz was sentenced to twenty-four years. Vršan was sentenced to thirty and I got twenty years of imprisonment and it continued this way. Then I didn’t notice what the others said. I heard them speaking, but I was still thinking about those twenty years… All I had in my mind were words: twenty and twenty again. I didn’t know if this was the truth or not, if I were dreaming or not. Twenty years.”

“When they had realized that I didn’t want to state in evidence, that I didn't speak the way they spoke, they forbade me to sit in the cell. At first, I didn’t mind it, but later on I realized that it was worse than beating. At five in the morning, when we used to get up, they came and brought black coffee and a piece of bread for breakfast. Then I was walking in the room from morning to evening, from five in the morning to ten in the evening, indeed. I did the same over and over again. I almost got mad. I couldn’t sit down, just in case they brought me lunch, but otherwise I wasn’t allowed to. When I wanted to have some rest, I sat down on the floor, but the guard who was on duty there on the corridor, knocked at the door immediately. I had to stand up and it went this way from December to January and after then even to June. This was the worst experience I ever had in that Prešov, I am sure. Maybe I would get mad, but fortunately I have had five fingers. As I was walking in the cell, I was also saying rosary. That’s what I was doing there.”

“Then I came to that cell. It was a great room, the biggest one in Leopoldov prison. There were about fifty people in one cell. There were no beds in that huge room; there were just some pallets in one mound. We spread those pallets on the floor and we used to sleep that way. Toilet was in the corner of the room. However, those were just four or five containers enclosed with wooden grating or wooden deck. So, the new prisoners were always placed near that toilet and I was there as well. It stank there for the whole night because men used to go there all the time. Fortunately, there was one lamp lighting even at night. On one hand, it was bad that a man didn’t sleep in the dark, but on the other, since there were no corridors between the pallets, if somebody had gone to the toilet without the light, he would have stamped on the others.”