"I got my hands on the Charter: I got it, man... It was broadcast on Free Europe several times over and over again. I had a tape recorder, many of them got broken, and I would record it. I still have some tapes–from that time–of them jamming it. So I recorded it. Then I had to record it again when the jamming wasn't so bad... And the girls transcribed it by always putting a stop, writing down the ten words they remembered, stop again, and that's how it worked out. Even writing down who signed it, I wanted a few prominent names of those who had signed it at the time. And that's how it got distributed. Because they, I didn't find out until after the revolution how it got distributed across the border. That they were able to export it before they confiscated it all. So those are these little tidbits. And the girls who were helping me like that were also putting themselves in a certain danger. I was afraid they would find out which machine it was typed on if things got tough. I don't think we even acknowledged the risk."
"I was quite cheeky at the time. It was brain-washing, truly. They kept us on that buserplatz, and the officers took turns telling us to vote against the Charter. And I stepped forward and said, 'Excuse me, but I don't know what I'm protesting against. I'd like to read it.' And now came another explanation of how I wouldn't understand it and how dangerous it was. Indeed, Major Ziezler was an expert on this. He was known for revealing afterwards that he never thought an ordinary carpenter would become a college professor. So then he was our college professor in the military, but he was just a simple man who belonged to the Party. He got a post, a rank, and so he tried to keep it. But I didn't get it from them because none of them even read it, just some snippet that the Party members had - I guess. I got hold of Charter 77, and through my economy friends, who could type, we distributed it. That might have bothered them a bit too, but they didn't find out. I was handing it out, seriously. I was once doing a part-time job at a construction company to make some extra money, and they talked about it there, too. The state was full of it back then. So I told this one guy discreetly–he didn't even know my name–that I'd bring it to him the next day. So I brought him a copy, and he gathered the guys together, and they read it there. I told them, 'You have to be careful!'"
"Our teacher Trnka, who taught us the Russian language, was in charge of the school library. The normalization period - a purge. They were removing 'objectionable' literature from the library. He chose me to help him out with it. And he shouldn't have done that. He was much more afraid than I was because I carried almost all the books home in two bags. I had to hide it in the cloakroom so nobody would see it. Then I went on the next train so I wouldn't alarm anyone with it. Like Solzhenitsyn - One Day of the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Mňačko - Delayed Reportages, Death Is Called Engelchen. I still have some of those books. Then from those airmen who were in the West. Well, he was really worried it would be trouble. He had them crossed off the cards, but the books weren't there. So I said, 'Tell them you threw it in the crusher.' He was more afraid than I was, but I got the books."
"I also had to destroy many of them [printed materials]. There was a period when house searches were carried out. Not only did State Security invite people for interrogations, but there were also house searches. At that time, I had a studio apartment in Bolevec, Tachovská 7, and many extraordinary things happened there, and I had many printed documents there. And when it became known that a stetsec with a search warrant could show up, I took a trip to the forest one evening. There I made a little campfire where I burned the files. I prayed while I did it and then roasted a sausage there. So they wouldn't get their hands on anything to lean on. Who wrote it out... and then it was always difficult to talk one's way out of it so that one wouldn't say anything on anybody."
Karel Rajtmajer was born on 4 October 1954 in Svojšice near Petrovice, near the town of Sušice. When he was six years old, his father died in a car accident. He graduated from the Mechanical Engineering School and later obtained a degree in engineering. In his studio apartment in Pilsen, he lent out banned literature, organised secret meetings of Catholic youth and reproduced samizdat publications. He participated in secret meetings where the youth studied the Bible and philosophy under the supervision of Aleš Opatrný, Mons. Vladimír Vyhlídka and Mons. Josef Kazda, and listened to lectures by interesting guests, for example, Tomáš Halík. In the 1980s, he was under investigation by State Security on suspicion of distributing recordings of the band Plastic People of the Universe. However, they failed to prove their suspicions because he was not distributing recordings of the prohibited music group but recordings of Free Europe. In 1993, he left his job to help establish the newly formed Pilsen Diocese. In 2021, he is still working at the Diocese and living in an apartment in Skvrňany, Pilsen.
