Pavel Mejsnar

“My sister was convicted, but we didn’t know anything about the sentence – whether it was for a year, for life, or for a month. Maybe a document did exist, but we never saw any. All we knew was that she would stay in the Vrchlabí prison for some time. A few days later, mum baked something nice, made this parcel, and then mum, dad and I walked to Vrchlabí to make sure she gets the parcel. Dad knew a little German, so he would speak. Vrchlabí was almost fully German, with just about six per cent of Czechs. My sister got the parcel. We were standing on the walkway in front of the prison and looking into the windows with bars. When she came back eventually, she said they put the table to the window, put a chair on the table, and she climbed up so she could wave at us through the bars. That was the last time we saw her. We knew nothing about her for a year after that.”

“Back then, toolmaking was all about grabbing a file and filing the thing to perfection. We’d get a piece of a steel profile and had to file it to the correct specs – the right size, the correct angles, the perfect flat – for six weeks straight. I loved it so much! The workbench and the vice dated back to the Laurin times. Our foremen came all from the Laurin times too. I was lucky enough to have one of them as my tutor. He was about fifty and he actually remembered Mr Laurin. He was an engine technician and very much into it, and we agreed that I would bring a motorcycle that I had at home in for repair. He arranged the paperwork, I took it to the factory through the guards, and he helped me out. In addition to standard training work that we all did, I would repair the motorbike on top. We just dismantled it to the last bit. He taught me to adjust the crankshaft and everything I needed to know. I could make my living doing that even today.”

“Back in ’68, I would take little Pavel to the preschool every morning. I would stay at work longer in the afternoon, so his mum picked him and took him home. The day that the Russians attacked us… I don’t know how I learned about it – we didn’t own a telephone back then. I immediately recalled the events in Hungary. I thought, well I’ll take him to the preschool today, but who knows if I ever get to pick him up again because military mobilisation was possible, and I was crying.”

“The commander of the military administration office got in and we drove round the surrounding villages at night, recruiting reservists to report in the barracks [in October 1956]. It was tough when we arrived at night, woke up the family and told them their dad had to go to the army in the morning. The order stated that men must report in the barracks in the morning. The reservists really arrived the next day, the beds were prepared, but nobody knew what would be next. The worst thing about it was that nobody knew who was a friend and who was a foe, and which side to take.”