RNDr. Jan Tomsa

"In the morning, when I woke up, I went down the stairs from the top floor of our villa to the ground floor. I saw my mother lying on the floor, writhing in terrible convulsions and making crazy noises. I went to her, thinking at first that something was wrong, some illness. Then I thought she was laughing. Then, she told me she was crying. When she calmed down, she explained that we were occupied by foreign troops. I was terribly frightened and had the question on my tongue if that meant there was a war. I didn't even dare to say it. I had never seen my mother like that before or since; I will never forget that."

"From what my dad told me, [State] Security came, 'Mr. Pastor, we just need a testimony. Would you come with us? They put him in the car and drove off. The SNB was based in the town hall then. There was already a State Security investigator sitting there, and he introduced himself to him. And the questions started. I don't know what kind of questions, of course, but they were like knock here, knock there. The kind where it's not immediately clear what he's there for. They'd already kept him there, and he went straight into custody. Investigation, investigation, for a long time, it was not at all clear what would be the subject of the prosecution. In the end, it turned out to be a subversion of the republic – that he was supposedly preaching against the state. It was, of course, a completely nonsensical matter, nothing like that ever happened. At the trial, this is a funny little thing, they presented as evidence - in quotation marks - a sort of sermon, which, of course, was demonstrably Catholic, so he could never have preached it. When he pointed that out, the judge waved his hand and said he didn't care and sent him to prison for four years."