Petr Švestka

“The prison wardens had bonuses for exceeding the norms so that they motivated us. They told us that if we do ten percent of pigs more, we’ll get a beer after the work. The prisoners were naturally enthusiastic: ‘Beer! Beer!’ And everybody worked like crazy. But this led to norms being raised. When I started we did 250 pigs and 80 cows a day. When I was leaving the norm was twice as high.”

“I knew there would be a problem, they arrested a friend. So I hid everything, took away my typewriter and left there only a few things I painted. I arrived from the weekend and after five minutes there was banging on the door. The police arrived. We had double doors, I opened the first one but didn’t want to let them in. I was well trained, from older chartists I knew what our rights were. But I only managed to say, ‘You don’t have the right for this…’ and was handcuffed.”

“When I was in custody in Litoměřice, we read book. There was a lot of illegal literature – from Škvorecký to Polish translations of books I even didn’t know. Great stuff. Well, I guess this was the case of darkness under the lamp. Perhaps they thought there could be nothing wrong in a communist prison and no-one checked. At the time the normal libraries were being destroyed, they had fantastic books in prison libraries.”