Antonín Otta

“There was an escape attempt there. From Vykmanov Camp. Of course, it flopped, it wasn’t good at all. They were waiting for them to climb through, they had floodlights trained on the spot where they would come out. Well, and then they started shooting without [warning]. The camp had roll call at two in the night, or one, to get us out into the air a bit. Well, and there were three that they’d killed, they carried them about outside the camp. ‘This is what happens when you try to escape.’ Well, that wasn’t good.”

“The lectures were every Sunday, [about] what was going on. The revolution, when they just chased out all the Germans from Prague, the siege of the Radio House. Well, and one man spoke up, saying he knew how it was - there were about four or five hundred of us listening there. It had been said that the Party had decided in what way the Czech Radio - Czechoslovak Radio back then - would be managed, occupied. And I’ll tell you a whopper. [...] ‘Any remarks?’ So one prisoner put his hand up: ‘Here.’ - ‘What have you got to add?’ - ‘That it’s not true.’ And he briefly explained, in ten minutes at most, in what way the Prague radio house was occupied, what went on there. And the cop said: ‘The way I said it is how it happened. You can’t even know anything about it.’ And he said: ‘Yes I can. I was the journalist who broadcast it.’”