The hostile system locked my father up and I had to learn to live with it
Petr Rosendorf was born on 1 October 1942 in Prague. His father, lawyer and National Socialist Antonín Rosendorf, was first removed from his official position after the communist coup in 1948 and sent to cut down trees. On 5 September 1952, he was arrested, and in December of that year, in a mock trial, he was sentenced to five years in prison for alleged treason. He passed through Pankrác, the Mořina penal quarry, the cement factory in Radotín, mines in Vinařice near Kladno and Rtyně in Podkrkonoší, and was also imprisoned in Valdice, Banská Bystrica, Senica and Žiár nad Hronom. His son Petr was allowed to visit him only three times during this time. Because his mother had to provide for the family financially, Petr took care of the household and his younger brother while he was growing up. He was lucky enough to get into the grammar schol, or, back then, the eleven-year school, but he was not allowed to apply for university despite his excellent grades. At the age of 16, he joined the bricklayers, later working at ČKD in electrical equipment for locomotives and the metro. In 2023, he was living in Prague.