Jan Sajdl

“Melanie Šnajdrová. She knew more people in Prague, and she also was in touch with people living in the communes. She was working at a secondhand bookshop. And back then, they knew that she was involved, that people were coming to this secondhand bookshop in Teplice to get samizdat literature, that it served at this kind of a transfer point. So they published this article in Průboj, the Communist Party District Committee´s daily paper, with a title 'Bookshelves full of drugs´. They accused her of having drugs in the store, like meth and other things like that. And she would cut her wrists right in that bookshop. She was nowhere to be found, so I had to go to the shop, as no one had a car. It was dark inside but I saw as if there was a leg sticking out from behind something back in the storeroom. I didn´t know what to do, as there was a no way to get inside. I knew there were iron bars in the back. Standing on main street, the Lenin street, I would get a cobblestone and I would throw it through the front door to smash it. And there was this patrol car passing by. And they didn´t even stop. 'Don´t mind what´s happening at the secondhand bookshop.' As if someone knew. They didn´t stop, they just went on. So I broke through the door and found her lying on those three chairs, two buckets full of blood underneath her. I knew that if I would call an ambulance, they would take her somewhere she didn´t want to go, to Ústí nad Labem or to some restricted psychiatric ward. So I called the single reasonable man I knew – Dr Pichlík from the surgery ward, a Charter 77 signatory. 'So bring her to me,' he said, 'I will stitch her up.'”

“After they were done, they released everyone except for me and my friend, Robert Appel, with whom I had been sharing a school desk since my first grade and with whom I had been publishing The Bird of Teplice Magazine (Teplický Fógl). No one would talk to us, they had all left. I said: 'When will you let us go home?' They told us to shut up. So we did. After some time, two men arrived. Maybe they were waiting for someone who could transport us to Teplice. As they didn´t want to let us go in Ústí nad Labem, I would say, even I didn´t know why. But later, I understood. So the two men came and said: 'So you would take a ride in a nice car after all.” And we would get in this Škoda car which was in such a terrible condition, we didn´t go in a nice car. We were sitting in the back seat, there was no one sitting with us. One of the policemen was driving and the other one was sitting next to him. Maybe the doors were locked so we wouldn´t run away. They drove us from Ústí to Chlumec, turning to a bus terminal where they would slow down and throw my friend from the car. Then they just drove away, with me still in the car. I found it quite weird. As we were halfway to Teplice, we had still a long way before us. They headed for this forest at Telenice, took a forest road. Suddenly, we were in this forest, it was night already, maybe even midnight. Now I just didn´t know what was going on. They were silent, didn´t say a word. As we came to the end of the road I realised that the door they threw Robert out of weren´t locked. So I opened the door and ran for my life without hesitating. I heard them laughing and lighting a cigarette: 'Seems he thought we would shoot him.' Such a laugh they were having. And they would drive away. It was so cold, so I went downhill, as I saw some signs of life there. And there was this sign 'Telnice' – a train stop. So I said to this women behind the counter: 'Hello, could you please corroborate that I had been brought here by the police...?' - 'I won´t corroborate a thing. The first train goes at five in the morning, you can sit right over there.'”