Václav Obadálek

“During the whole time of his imprisonment my mother supported my father and came to visit him. Everywhere she would introduce herself as his fiancé. In Horní Moštěnice the family would even refer to her as Václav’s wife. At that time it probably became clear to her that she cannot just tell Vašek: ‘I’m not enjoying this anymore, you’ve been locked up for eight years now, I also want to have a life.’ In 1948 when she and my dad met she had a suiter from Domažlice who waited for several years. But eventually he came to see her, met her in front of her parents’ shop and told her: ‘Jana, I would like to marry you, let’s go to your parents’ and I will make a proposal.’ But she told him that this was not possible and broke up with him.”

“The Members of Parliament who investigated crimes against the German population knew at that time already that they were about to become unwanted, that such things will be swept under the carpet. They were thinking about how to protect their and their families’ lives. Even doctor Bunža was invited to emigrate several times. He sorted it out by not coming home at all, sleeping over at various places and going to the Parliament via various routes. My dad served as liaison between him and his family: when he or his wife called, he sorted out whatever they needed.”

“My dad and his fellow prisoners tried to understand why the communists locked them up. So, in the nick they studied Marxism-Leninism. There were plenty of educated people there – priests, lawyers, medical doctors – and they commonly held lectures and seminars. I still have a four-page letter from 1956 in which my father describes to his eldest brother the economic and philosophical basis of communist materialism and explains why it couldn’t work and didn’t work. In prison he became better informed about what was going on in the communist block than those people who had their ‘common concerns’: to go to work and bring children to school.”