Bohumil Robeš

"I got time in jail for saying that the president was an idiot. When we came to the construction site in the morning with barbed wire all around, we found a lime inscription in the foundations of what was to become a house of culture: 'Zápotocký is a d*ck as much as those thieves to whom he gives amnesty'. These were the rough words. This was the way it was."

"This is a performance from the year 1952, where I studied the poor husband. Otherwise, I think I may say that I was a little bit of a celebrity. I had a certain authority, that's for sure. And when we graduated, I was the one who wrote the assessments. But I didn't sign them, because they wouldn't recognize my name. I was no functionary, no member of the Youth Union or something of the sort. Jarka Mohelská and Eva Čunková signed it in my stead. I wrote very positive assessments. I recommended all of them and I wrote it in such a way that they were all later admitted to the school. They were my classmates. They didn't even know that I had written the assessments. I wrote it, but didn't sign it, because they wouldn't accept it had there been my name under them. I recommended all of them and all of them were admitted to college, except for Ivan Jebavý, because his dad owned a big butchery shop and it was a very well-known name. Too big a name to be admitted. First, he had to pass an apprenticeship for a carpenter in the mines and graduate from university in the meantime. But it ruined his life. He had problems with his nerves. I don't recall what exactly happened but he somehow spoke out against the regime and subsequently was in hospital with his nerves."

"I was then transferred to a mental hospital. Everyone was completely done for in there. They gave me some pills. I couldn't feel anything but still, it was making me a nutcase. All the time, we were receiving some tablets. Whoever knew how to spat it out. I recall that time because since then, I've had a goatee."

"The interrogations included beatings as well. At first they thought that they had caught a big fish. Then they weren't so sure anymore and they didn't know exactly what to do with me. They also submitted me to cross-interrogations. A great number of uniformed members of the secret state police were present at the interrogations. There was some staff captain there and other officers. As I didn't cooperate with them and refused to testify, they told me: 'Look, there are three types of interrogations. The first type is the educational interrogation where you cooperate with us. The second type is the persuasive interrogation where we'll convince you to cooperate with us. And the third type of interrogation is the liquidation interrogation'. He started naming the people he had already broken during his interrogations. He said that they all softened up. He tried to scare me. I was ready for this because Bisom had told me about their methods. At first I ridiculed them quite a bit. They told me that I'd soon stop laughing. Coincidentally, I had been employed in Radost (Joy), which was a children's puppet theater. It was located close to the infamous Příčná Street where I was being interrogated and through the windows, even though they were covered with wire, I could see the kids walking home from school or to the theater, whole bunches of them. I could also see how they spoke together. This was a sort of a relief for me and it helped me very much to keep up my spirit. it was such an enhancement. After some time, you harden up. The worst was when... I was in love with a student, but we hadn't even kissed. Once the STB agent interrogating me started talking about my mother in a very rude way. He could see from my expression that he had stroke a chord, that this was sensitive for me. Therefore he started to speak badly about that girl as well. He said that if I could only see what a bitch she was. I was emotionally very much attached to that girl and this was very hard for me. I've never forgiven them that they talked this badly about my mom and my girlfriend."

"That Alois Koudelka! I'll tell you what hurt my mother the most. They used a paragraph on the use of violence against an official functionary, which I got at Leopoldov, when they were asking people in Holubice, why I still wasn't back home. In October 1957, I was supposed to come back home because of the five years that I had been sentenced to, four had already passed and one was pardoned in the wake of an amnesty. But they didn't let me go home and they told no one why I was kept in prison. So Koudelka and other comrades started to spread the rumor that it was because I had murdered a man there. This rumor was then spread even by my family! It comes as no surprise then that when I arrived back home after thirteen years ... they didn't know what I had been tried and sentenced for. Therefore I later wrote those books and there are documents in the books from my trial that prove what. The 'murder' paragraph is not included in my charge. I had to get down on my knees in front of my own mother and swear to the memory of my father that I hadn't killed anybody. I had to explain it to them. Tears streamed down from her eyes and she said: 'I didn't believe them anyway Mílo'."

"I loved theater and thus I of course signed up for the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, direction. Of course they did cadre profiling of the candidates. The comrades approved the candidates in a pub, and although they were sitting at a table in the corner of the pub, part of their conversation was overheard by my friend Milada, the daughter of the innkeeper. She then told me that I'd probably not pass the admission tests because she heard that the comrades had produced a cadre profile assessment on me in which they wrote that I should not be admitted to the Academy. I knew a girl who played with us in the theater in Křenovice. She was an StB collaborator and she made no secret of it. No one knew - not even my friends - that I had submitted an application to the Academy of Performing Arts. She said to me: 'Milo, you've applied for direction at AMU? You'll not pass the admission tests. They will not let you study at AMU'. That's what she told me a month or two before the tests in Prague. What was the situation like when we did the tests? We were about five candidates there. I don't remember the names anymore. I remember only Doubrava, who was a favorite of the director of that time Antonín Dvořák. These were influential people in the sphere of theater back then. He then worked on television with those comrades. He was the only one who passed the tests. And there was also one so-called 'workers' cadre'. The rest of us - we were just idiots. The workers' cadre told us that he knew nothing about theater but he got the order to take part in the competition. When we did the test, performing on the stage and so on, he had no idea how to act. He said: 'guys, I'm sorry. I have my orders, I have to do the test'. Such was the situation back then. So you know, things like this make you embittered."

"They put me into the straight jacket three times. It was the worst during the Hungarian events when I told the camp guards that they would be held responsible for their acts. I spent an eternity in the jacket. After some time, the muscles relax. They handcuffed me in such a way that my hands were tied to my feet. At first, you wet yourself. Then you defecate yourself and so on. After a while, you feel nothing anymore. You become completely numb. When the excrements dry on your body like glue, it feels the way it feels. I sang, I recited poems, I composed poems and I cursed them."

"Don't even ask me what it was like here under the Russians. I don't want to recall it. Soviet soldiers were accommodated in our village. Their superior was usually somebody of the rank of a captain. He came to my mother. My mother was a young widow, a very attractive woman. He pulled a gun on her and started unbuttoning his pants. He was very vulgar. He was drunk and aggressive. Luckily, the village men readily managed the situation. They ran for a Russian officer, who was his superior. He was supposedly some major, a professor. The major kicked that captain out of our house and beat him up badly. When the captain saw his superior, he lost his aggressiveness right away."

"I'll tell you one more thing which happened to me in Ruzyně. I was still a virgin at that time. I had never had anything with a woman by then. The biggest humiliation for me thus was when I had to undress and the warden who came to inspect me was not a man, but a woman. She had a stick which she poked into my buttocks and my genitals. She was visibly disgusted by me. Had she laughed or made obscene gestures - that would be still much more acceptable to me. But her disgust was terrible. She was disgusted by me. She inspected me with a greater disgust than if I had been a dirty dog. This is what they were like. They systematically humiliated you. They let you rot in the correction where there was no ventilation, no fresh air. And when there is no ventilation, the air gets thick and stuffy. People naturally produce, if you excuse me, bodily gases and smells. There was nothing one could do about it in those conditions. But they accused you of being a swine with no hygiene at all. That was their style. It was the same in Slovakia as everywhere else. This humiliation haunted me throughout my whole stay in prison. Unfortunately, I had to spend some time in Bohnice as well. It was very degrading there as well. I was in an isolated department for political prisoners. This department is still in existence there today. I saw the cages where they kept the prisoners. People were actually dying there. The prison warden there was a female. She threw herself at me. The humiliation there was terrible."