Draha Schnirch

"In the beginning, we used to write, I don't know, twice a week, a lot, a lot of letters, and once a year we used to phone each other because it was so expensive. Then when the second daughter was born, my mother came to visit, we invited her, and then not every year, but a couple of times. I came for the first time with the kids in '92, after ten years." - "Was that without any problems?" - "It was quite, in those days if you were somewhere for more than a week or a few days you had to report to the police station. When I was in Prague, the gentleman who checked passports asked why I had come. I said, 'I want to introduce my children to my family...' - 'Well, go on, go on, there are two gentlemen waiting for you.' Well, of course no one was waiting there, it made him happy to think he was going to scare me.'

"Then, I don't know what year they took it away from him because he was not a member of the Communist Party and worked in the quarry below Vratíkov. I remember that a truck came and took everything out. People stood and looked and said, 'They took their vacuum cleaner, they took their fridge,' but that's not true, they were only taking things from the shop. That's how gossip gets made sometimes. I don't know, I was a kid, but he wanted to support his family, he loved it, and he lost that kind of purpose he had in life. I'm sure he must have suffered because it was hard work in the winter. Back then, they didn't have the insulating clothes like they do now. I know he had boots and he would put on some boots, he would wrap his feet all day in the cold, and gloves, he certainly suffered through that."