Břetislav Jeník

"Creating the leaflets and drawing the motto was the hardest part. I was pulling the flags down, yes; we made shorts out of it. The new police headquarters had been built at that time which was later known as the StB building. It was located on the Lenin Street. That’s where I pulled the red flag down; I cut it off the pole. When I had a few of the flags I gave them to some man who used them for making shorts. Of course they (police) never found out about this. They only knew about the leaflets and the mottos. "Have you ever regretted that?" What? "Performing these rascality’s, especially those that have influenced your life for the next ten years" The only thing I regret is that I didn’t leave right away. Real it was...it was just nonsense, really just the monkey business. And at that time I had no idea about it, but my father was already taking steps necessary for our family to leave to the West. He was talking about Venezuela - thank God it didn’t happen, it would have been a disaster! But he already had plans for us, for our whole family. I basically spoiled his plans by going to jail. My uncle told me afterwards: ´Why you didn’t tell us anything boys, we could have arrange the escape for all of you.´ It wasn’t any problem in the past. You could cross the border line in Moravia and then go to Vienna from here and further to the American zone and that was it."

"That’s the most interesting thing about the whole escape though: we managed to cut the bars and one third of all the people in our cell (there were about 27 of us altogether) didn’t know about it. From the window we could see the soccer field across the street. Soccer games were played there on Sunday afternoons. The Slovak prisoners were in the window above us, we were on the lower floor. Two or three men covered the one who was cutting the bars and we yelled and shouted to eliminate the noise from cutting the bars. Two or three men sat under the window and sang national chores and I was beating the egg white...At that time we were already able to buy some groceries and stuff like e.g. eggs, butter, cigarettes. There was a little mobile store where we ordered things and they brought it to our cells." So you actually had some prison money? "Yes, some kind of coupons. Those who had some money in their accounts could exchange these for coupons and use them for purchasing things in the canteen. Therefore we had eggs. I grabbed two spoons and the mess tin and beat the egg whites this high, but because I must have kept beating if went down again. Only yellow water was left there at the end. That we couldn’t use anymore, so we just threw it away." How long did it take to cut the bars? "I’m not sure, maybe hour and a half. We knew that on the week days the guards were standing under the window. Not on Sundays. Nobody was there on Sundays. So we were free to cut the bars then. But after our escape there has been a guard all the time since. We used to have visitors on Sundays; in fact I have had a visitor on that very Sunday In the morning. My father came so I...I couldn’t tell him about our plan, so I was just trying to indicate that something was in the air. On that day we escaped...It was a fatal mistake that cost me so many years of my life at the end. I should have gone right away, but the men who were climbing down stopped all of a sudden - they got nervous - so the men who were already down thought: OK, something has happened there we won’t wait here for them. And they left."

"Long before the Russians came; I already had my leaving permit for vacation in Yugoslavia." It must have been very difficult back then... "It wasn’t difficult. That’s the thing. I came to the police station on Leninova Street, the passport department and told them: ´I need a passport so I can go to Yugoslavia on my vacation.´ and when I entered the office some girl was sitting there. Her name was Jarka Dočekalová, she was also from Kunštát like me. She was a real communist. And as I saw her there I thought: Good bye my passport! But she said: ´Hi, Břetislav! You want to travel abroad right? And I said: ´Well, yeah.´ ´Yes, I know, hmmm.´ She gave me the passport basically immediately. She was the red guards, big communist. She was very active during the February 1968 and afterwards she started to work in the police office. So that’s how I got my passport. We packed our things and because we couldn’t go through Hungary, we drove to Austria and stayed in Vienna. From there we went to Arsenal where the refugee camp was. We waited there."

"After they released me from the jail I stayed with my father for a while. But it was quite crowded there. Then I lived with my cousin too and later I got married and we got ourselves an apartment here in Černé Pole location. I began to work. I started first as...I tried to work in geological research where I could use my experiences from uranium mines. I didn’t like it there, so I went to...In Leopoldov prison I learnt to be a bricklayer and so I got a job as a bricklayer in the Construction Company in Brno. I learnt how to lay the teraso tiles. So that’s what I was doing and what I was good at. I was also able to make good money at it. Not with the salary, but through the extra hours. I used to have a salary as low as 1500 - 1600 Czech crowns per month which was the usual carpenter’s salary. And it was rather over an average salary because the average salary in Czechoslovakia was around 1200 Czech crowns. And I was able to make as much as 3000 CZK during one weekend - Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I found out later that the construction companies were not able to satisfy all customers and people were building houses and needed carpenters for that - making the stairways or the floors inside etc. At the same time as I was working, I began to attend night school and later I was able to finish high school. After that I wanted to continue at the University, but they wouldn’t let me in. "And that was what year?" I think it was somewhere in 1966. But my bosses just laughed at me and told me: ´What were you thinking? With your personal report looking like this?!´ By using a fiddle I managed to get at least into the High Tech College. That’s what my prison-mates taught me. The officials found out about it in about a year and they couldn’t understand how I managed to be accepted. Faking my birth certificate! There were no computers back then, all they had was the negative records, which means, that they only had a record about people who committed a crime already. So when you faked the date of your birth - all you needed to do was to change one number - they got an empty record on you then. And that’s how I got to the Technical College. All of my education is from the time before we left to Australia. In fact, I attended also one Technical school in New Zealand...But I wasn’t able to get into the University though. Back then, when they found out about how I got to the college, they (the communist officials) asked me in and told me: ´Look, pal, it’s the tradesmen who always go up. No matter what you do, you always find the tradesman there...right? ´ "So they basically saw the bourgeois element in you?" Yes, I was, but I...they didn’t like that...Of course, they didn’t understand it, didn’t understand the society, how it works etc. People with the initiative always get where they wanted, in every kind of political system. My father was full of initiative and he acquired a book shop. So they let me finish the school after all. But they didn’t have any work for me according to my qualifications therefore when I found myself a job with the agriculture constructions, I must have been dismissed, because they didn’t have any work for me. The Agricultural Construction company hired me immediately as a foreman, but within a month I was already a builder. That was my last job in Czechoslovakia, the builder."