Miloš Rataj

“To stop us from becoming friends in prison, there was a roll call with personal belongings once in every two or three months. That meant we had to pack everything from the bed in the blanket – the pillow, our personal belongings such as the toothbrush and soap (I didn’t have much of that) and line up. They read the entire list; buildings were indicated with letters and rooms with numbers. They would say things such as: ‘Rataj from K3 to G6.’ And I never came back to my former room – I went to G6 with completely different people. We had to get on again, get to know each other… That was not very pleasant but we maintained contacts otherwise because I worked with the same people all the time.”

“I did not regret anything. I was young, with no relationship, no obligations, no debts and my entire life lay ahead. I made plans for what I could do. I was only sorry knowing that I would not graduate, as I had been studying a subject that I thought was the only one that I could ever enjoy. When I started serving my sentence and saw the order and relations among the inmates, I thought: ‘This is a completely different school – you’re going to study an entirely different subject here.’”