PhDr. Eva Ryšavá

"Totalitarianism has been a great disaster. It affected not only my life, but our entire family. And I would say totalitarianism was killing people. It really killed our father. He would have lived to a much older age, because our grandfather died in his 95 years. Our dad didn't even live until seventy. It was a murderous time, really. And I regret when it's being forgotten. Now only the material aspects of what cost what then and how cheap it was are being remembered, but at the same time, is being forgotten how terribly difficult some goods were to be found and how our mothers stood in line for meat and oranges. Life was very difficult, but not only materially, but mainly spiritually. And also, that constant fear. Because we still lived in fear and we never got rid of that fear. You never knew what they could create against you. At the time of the Charter [77] and the protests, it was a witch hunt. It was a really awful time. I wouldn't wish to anyone that this time would come back again. And there is a great danger that the young generation in particular could succumb to what is being said today. The communists expect people to forget very quickly.”

["And from elementary school, do you remember any interesting moments when the communist regime came about, did anything change?"] "Sure, it has changed. We had classes of civic behaviour, where the school’s director, comrade Němec – big fish at the Party, gave us classes. And I remember when the big trials like the one with Slánský started, comrade Němec came and we had to take out civic textbooks and rip out from the textbooks the pages where Slánský's name was and those convicted as the biggest traitors, all these had to leave the textbooks. And on that occasion, the comrade director also told us about them, what kind of villains they are. And then when Stalin died and Gottwald died, it was a very pleasant time for me. I've loved classical music since I was a kid. And the radio, which still played communist songs and Russian songs, was suddenly playing just beautiful classical music. The mourning marches were played. Chopin and Beethoven, mourning marches, beautiful mourning music. It was a really beautiful time. Stalin died, then Gottwald died after him, so there was nothing else on the radio for a month like that, and I enjoyed it.”

"Our father was arrested like many others of the intelligence. More or less, all the reasons that have been given have been forced from him, we do not even want to search how that happened. Of course, one of the accusations, was the anti-state activity. He was employed by the Ministry of Posts, so he was accused of stealing state secrets and similar things, which was a complete absurdity, but it was part of a deliberate liquidation of Czech intelligence, which did not subscribe to communism and which was potentially dangerous to the regime, so they were destroyed following the Soviet model. My father was accused, along with others, as the leader of an anti-state group from which he did not know any of them, but this did not matter at all.”