Miloslav Trubáček

"Then they suddenly brought in an older man, who was my lawyer and whom I had never seen before. My brother had found him for me. He was a nice but fearful man. He started to convince me to say everything exactly as it was in the charge file and not to make other statements because this could make things worse. He told me that the accusation was very serious and that it could lead to capital punishment. I thought: ‘capital punisment for that?’. Anyway, he affected me in this manner and told me that we would meet on Monday [during the trial]. The fact is, that he really tried to speak in my favor. But the fallacy of the secret police! They presented in the charge file – and the judge showed it to me – a picture of several grenades. I told the judge – it was the only thing I objected to – that I have never had grenades in my hand. And he said: ‘Well, but you must have served in the army, didn’t you?’ I replied: ‘Yes, but in third line troops and only two months. We didn’t got any grenades, just some old German rifles and light machine guns.’ So the judge didn’t account this fake evidence and didn’t discuss it any more. However, I was very suprised what they had prepared against me.”

“[The cancellor of the Embassy in Moscow] Malý told me, that I should get to know some Russian. I thought that he was going to invite me to his home because his wife was from a mixed Czech-Russian family. So I said: ‘Tell me when.’ He came to me and said that it's not far away and that we will get there on foot, because it’s dificult to park there. He pulled me into a house which was abandoned and dilapidated; the windows were without curtains. The elevator was there, but it was just in the first floor. He knocked on the door and inside was one other guy. The apartment was empty with painted floors, as it was in the old flats. Then I saw a small table and four chairs, nothing else. So I thought: ‘'This stinks, this is no Russian family visit.‘ They asked me how I was so I began to speak about the theater, culture and exhibitions, and then I told them that I had a lot of work to do. They said: ‘Well, we can meet another time.’ I said: ‘I constantly have lot of work to do, and that another meeting was out of the question". They probably wanted some commitment, but I just didn’t speak about it and since then, they never tried it again. Malý brazened it out but only aked: ‘Did you tell somebody about the visit? I sad: ‘No, why would I?’ – ‘You'd better forget it,’ he said.”

“When the members of the secret police spoke with me – when I was in prison, and also after my release in 1960 – one guy visited me several time. He was nice and educated, not primitive. He wanted to know if I had any relatives in America or England. I had no relatives. He speculated about how I could flee abroad. I understood that they wanted to send me somewhere as an agent, but I could not imagine that; I couldn't leave my family, brother and parents. Once, he – indeed, I don’t know his name, none of them had introduced themselves – took me out to Hradčany. How and where we drove, I do not know. He led me into a nice big office, and there was a man with glases. He was well dressed, but little bit dreadful, quite impassible. He only looked at me, didn’t ask anything. After some time, he only said: ‘Well, that's enough.’ I was driven into town and was not contacted again. Much later, after the Revolution [1989], I was showing a group of journalists and various communist dignitaries around Prague and discovered that one of them was [Alojz] Lorenc. He was living in retirement in a beautiful villa.”

“In 1956, a committees of young, smart and well-dressed men came to the prison. They obviously had great power. They visited various prisoners and they chose to talk to me as well. A colonel – well-dressed with black-hair and clearly an elite of the secret police – told me: ‘We know that some of our judgments were a bit strict, but now it will go fast. They have begun to make revisions and many people who haven't behaved well, are gone. They are no longer part of the secret police. But of course, we want those people who will be released and whose judgements will be revised not to make any hostile action again.’ I said, 'You know, this is enough for me.’ He said: ‘I can' t promise you anything, but if it will continue quickly, by Crismas, most of you could be home.’ But then the Hungarian Revolution occured, violent controls began, they were turning our beds, the food also got worse.”