Pavel Palme

"I will want this and that object, I will get four more participants, they will fictitiously pay a thousand crowns, they will register for the auction, which means, there will be at least five, then it could be a Dutch auction. They organized it like this, where I know that five people registered according to the registration, when we checked it before the auction, if everything was in order and there was even a sixth participant. So, we were happy in our minds that the sixth participant would take it from those mafia men. Coincidentally, I bid it as a bidder, so I was happy and bid to sell it. I waited, I called for one of the six people to decide, I didn't say how many participants there were, it wasn't said, it wasn't published anywhere. So, someone sign up - in the end one of those mafia men signed up and got it for the ten percent."

"So, in 1985 I received an offer to promote from the most ordinary worker to the head of the establishment. And I told them I'd take a week to think. After two or three days, the cadre official called, it was not the chairman, but the cadre official called me, so I said I took it and set the conditions. The conditions were for me to have a trial period until the end of the year. And I said that I would never join the Communist Party, I am a believer, you will have to tolerate me as a believer and not say, 'Go to church there, so that no one can see you, so you do not embarrass us.' "

"I remember playing as a five years old boy in front of the synagogue where we lived, on cubes or cat heads. I remember a passenger car from Komenská came down the alley to Traplova street, I think it was the Tudor brand. A car arrived and stopped in front of our house. Two or three gentlemen in long mantles got out and went to our house. And I was wondering what kind of gentlemen they were, whether I should go home or rather stay out. Fear did not allow me, and I decided to stay outside and wait for these gentlemen to leave the house. When I got home, my mother was at home with my youngest brother, who was two years old, my sister and my older brother were at school, my father was at work, my mother was crying at home, she was sitting in the corner. When I looked into the room, it was turned upside down, as during inspections. I got scared, so I cried, I was five years old and I asked what was going on, and she says, 'They checked and looked for anti-state literature that we could keep at home.' "