„Od otce jsem se dozvěděl, že když komunisté vyhráli volby v šestačtyřicátém, dostali přes čtyřicet procent a Gottwald řval, že žádné kolchozy nebudou, žádná družstva. No tak otec říkal: ,To je lež, všechno bude podle ruského vzoru, všechno.´ Od něho jsem se to dozvěděl. On se, když zapisoval tu elektřinu, tak se setkával s různými lidmi, kteří byli v Rusku, kteří byli zajatci nebo byli v legiích a od těch přebíral ty informace, od těchto lidí."
„Zatkli mě, nějak na podzim, domovní prohlídka a tak dále, tady na tom vršku, kde byl šéf policie, tam jsme jeli kolem, tak ti estébáci mi řekli: ,Všechno z kapes ven, všechno´. Tak já jsem to vyndal a teď jsem tam měl jednu adresu, kterou bych nerad, aby se jim dostala do rukou, nestačil jsem ji zlikvidovat. Zásada byla a to říkal Petr Uhl: ,Nic nepsat, všecko si pamatovat. ´ A tak teď to tam bylo na stole, těch pět estébáků tam sedělo a čekali, až přijede vyšetřovatel z Brna, ten měl právo vyslýchat. Krajský. A trvalo to dlouho a teď já ty papíry, byly rozložené všelijaké jízdenky, peníze, tak jsem přemýšlel jak to zlikvidovat, tak jsem se vymrštil, hrábl po tom a sežral to.“
„Potom jsme natáčeli, jak ta fronta šla. V Holešově, tam jich bylo nejvíc, tam byly kasárna, to bylo obsazené, ale ten velitel kasáren je nepustil ty Rusy dovnitř a oni nakonec násilím tam nešli. Potom jsme natáčeli, tak jsme to všechno tajně točili tajně, nějaký důstojník za námi s bambitkou lítal a chtěl nás zastřelit, že to není dovoleno – natáčení.“
“There was the accusation of sedition, etc. My sedition consisted in a cyclostyled copy of Talks with Jan Masaryk, which I got my hands on. It was written by Viktor Fischl and modelled after the Talks with T. G. Masaryk written by Čapek, and I made several copies of this book on my typewriter and I gave them to my friends. But it got to somebody who was not supposed to get hold of it. They were monitoring me for some time, they tapped the telephones which I had, and in September 1971 three gentlemen rang my doorbell and there was a house search.. I was sentenced for sedition, according to Section 100, and I served one and a half year in prisons, at first in detention prison in Brno for eleven months and then in the Bory prison in Pilsen. It was horrible, after the first interrogations; I could not imagine not being able to work for the television or film anymore. I liked my job and I grew slightly addicted to it, to film-making. Thinking that I would have to give up my job after I had gotten back from prison and be left just with some menial work, that was unthinkable for me. But I eventually somehow came to terms with it, and then when I went to serve my sentence in the Bory prison, I met several political prisoners there.”
“They had no way of tracking me; they must have been following me, but they did not know where I would be the next day and where I would go... While I was in Kostelec, an StB man would come to the manager regularly every week and ask about who had come to see me, and they knew about me. But here, I was one day in Kroměříž, another day in Zlín, and so on, and it was very complicated for them to monitor me in this way. And some of those exceedingly active StB men who were sending me messages that they had talked to some of my friends… they didn’t dare to speak to me directly, and so they would send a message: ‘We would wait for Mr. Němec when we have gathered more on him, for at least five or six years in prison, we will squash him!’ Well, and they managed to do that in 1985, when they arrested me for the second time.”
“There were people of various views there. There were Catholic believers, there were Trockiists like Petr Uhl, there were reform communists and then there was quite a large group of socialists from Brno. They were Šilhán, Jaroslav Mezník, Vyroubal, ing. Pokorný, about eight or ten of them. They were a group of those socialists who wanted to reform the socialist party to resemble the national socialist party as it had been after WWII. At that time, after February 1948, the parties that were allowed to exist were the people’s party and the so-called socialist party, but they were merely attachments to the communist party because they had to follow the communist party’s policy. In spring 1968 they wanted to reform this and a small action program was established. Jaroslav Šabata was one of those reform communists in Brno who were putting it together and these socialists joined him. They were in the Bory prison with me... There were people like general Prchlík, one of the few who had refused the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies, and there were some soldiers as well, but I don’t remember them anymore. In the Bory prison we were allowed to mingle freely, within the designated ward, and we were able to walk from one cell to another.”
“There were various types of people. I asked one person: ‘What is it that you were sentenced for?’ He replied: ‘I got an LP.’ ‘What does an LP mean?’ ‘Well, it is stands for robbery with violence.’ It was also for the first time when I heard the word ‘tunnel.’ Tunnel, in the prison slang. What does it mean? Well, a fraud. There were people sentenced for ‘tunneling,’ too.”
“When they arrested me, they said: ‘Please place all your personal belongings on the table here.’ I had several addresses written on pieces of paper, and it would not be good if they got hold of them. We were waiting there for about an hour, there were about five of them. I suddenly stood up and grabbed the paper and swallowed it. I learnt this in the Bory prison, we had been sending illegal messages there, too. They weren’t expecting that. They jumped at me.”
Jaromír Němec was born on 16 January 1935 in a working-class family in Kelč. His father ran a pub there, but the authorities nationalized it after February 1948 and he thus returned to his original job as an electrician. Jaromír learnt the electro-technician‘s trade in the arms factory in Vsetín. While doing his military service he served in the radio mechanic unit and afterwards he had several short-time jobs before eventually finding employment in the Gottwaldov (present-day Zlín) film studios, where he then worked as a sound engineer for about eleven years. During the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies to Czechoslovakia in 1968 he was one of those who were recording the entry of the foreign armies into our territory. In 1971 he was arrested for distribution of samizdat and for sedition, and he spent a total of one and a half years of imprisonment in Brno and in Pilsen-Bory. Afterwards he changed jobs several times and he continued to be politically active: he signed Charter 77, he was helping with publication of samizdat (Infoch, etc.), copying of texts and organizing transport of banned books over the border. In 1985 he was arrested again, but he was released half a year later. The court trial took place no earlier than 1989, and Jaromír was released with only a suspended sentence. After the Velvet Revolution he was politically involved in the Civic Forum in Zlín.
