Pavel Konzal

“A Communist Party near our home, this was a problem. They were fed up with us and we with them. During the war, I and my sister were denounced on the notice board for not wanting to join the German curatorium, while now, on same notice boards, there were our names as names of outcasts who did not want to join the Socialist Youth Union (SSM). I was therefore notified by the Central Committee of the Communist Party that I was not allowed to sit the school-leaving exam. I did not know what to do. I announced this to my superiors. We had the same superiors as in monastery. Then it was managed by a professor, who said that if they didn’t let me pass the school-leaving exam he would not allow me to study theology. He wrote the church law code and lectured on law in Rome. He told me to get married and work with them as a lay priest.”

“And on April 13, they took all male monasteries in the country by raid. The police, militia and other such villains. I slept in one room with a fellow student, he was a year older, in octave. I slept by the window, he slept by the door, so he was woken earlier and I could hear what was happening. I pretended to sleep. Then a militia man or somebody like that approached me with a rifle. He poked my ribs, saying, ‘Get up, you pig, you come with us’. Such a nice waking up. They gathered us in the dining room, said we were in danger, that people wanted to do us harm and that they had to protect us. And they said they would gather us in a single place. There were about ten priests and we students. They loaded us onto a bus and they took superiors to Želiv, where all monastic superiors were interned. They told us that they would take us elsewhere. They said we would go to Ostrava. The police said it. There were about five armed policemen with us in the bus. But we could see we were driving in the direction of Brno. We were curious because we were going east. No one could know, they could have been taking us to Siberia. At that moment you simply don’t know what happens.”

“My wife was placed in the same corridor as myself. He was in the first cell of that corridor, she was appointed as the corridor service — she cleaned the bathroom, the corridor and distributed food behind doors. Before each cell, there was a shelf, where false teeth and glasses were deposited. After lights out there was this shouting ‘Teeth. Glasses!’ We put it on the shelf, she recognised my glasses and my cell. She then banged the broom against the door. It’s unbelievable, it looks like a fairy-tale, but there were peepholes with flaps, the one on our door did not close properly, so there was a narrow slice. When she banged on the door I could see her. Can you image what it meant for me? That I could see her? We were together for a year. Whenever someone left for court, their meal stayed in the corridor. And she always asked the commander to give it to us, that we were hungry. So we had a bread or a meal more. It was unbelievable, but this was the way it was. It was God’s thing, I didn’t interfere.”

“They took us to Králíky, to a Redemptorist Church. They divided us into rooms, there were four of us in a cell. There were already the rules — the rules how to behave. They mustered us, around thirty armed policemen surrounded us and they started shouting at us that we were the nation’s outcasts that people could destroy us but that they would protect us. This was the introduction. They said, we would line up like this every morning and then work. We had only the most necessary things on us, only a few clothes. In the morning the Secret Police chief arrived. There were four Secret Police officers, they were the management. They shouted at us that we were outcasts, that they would teach us not to lazy around. There were university professors among us and they were shouted at by such idiots. But we told ourselves that we were in the Lord’s hands and that nothing wrong can happen to us.”

“And he said…. ‘We are in trouble. They took our leader. And he spoke. It’s a problem.’ But his parents were ardent bolsheviks, he was released, he signed he would be an informer, but did not want to cooperate with them. He wanted to pull their leg. He was a student, freshly from secondary school. He needed to hide somewhere. They asked me whether I would help. As a Christian, asked for help, I had to help. So I hid that boy for two years at various places. Not only hid him but also gave money to people for hiding him. He was to flee across the border and study at the Sorbonne.” – “So he hid from the Secret Police? Where did you hide him?” — “In South Bohemia, the Sušice region.” — “And where exactly?” — “In families. Also with a nurse. They had a room partitioned and he lived there. But it was crazy, really. He translated there, I don’t know what exactly. He wanted to escape across the border. I started looking for a crossing. Svatý Kámen, it was a Redemptorist monastery straight on the southern border. And the priest who managed it, he knew every stone, he took people across the border.”