František Turňa

* 1963

  • “According to their construction, I leaked a state secret to my brother, with whom I had not been in contact for at least a year. He should have escaped with an information about the position of Russian rockets on the Czechoslovak land and sell it. That was their construction. Absolute nonsense!”

  • “And there a car was waiting for me, they took me to the February street to the secret police headquarters. There a fat one informed me that nothing was over yet, and they would watch me. And I had to hand in my passport for example. It was 1986, revolution was in 1989. From then on I was thinking about nothing else but how to escape in any way possible.”

  • „The second one suddenly started to scream. The man in a suit, who would sit all the time, said „Stand up! You are a soldier! Stand straight. You are charged with treason- with leaking the state secret. The sentence is eight to twelve years. But just to inform you, you won’t come out of the jail alive, you’ll end up in Jáchymov. “He had a 5-minute monologue. In such moments, your whole world falls apart. You understand nothing. I knew what I was in for. I knew, what I was doing for the one and half year in military service. Since then, three weeks have passed, and I didn’t have a reason to talk about it with anyone. I had to deal with something completely different- that I found myself in a foreign environment with foreign people. It was a fight for survival, but in a different sense. If I weren’t an older soldier, I wouldn’t survive. Already then, but due to something else. That’s how the prisons operate. And then suddenly, someone from another world comes in a suit, offers you a cigarette and says „we came to kill you, dear boy. “

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    Záhorská Bystrica, 24.01.2019

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The man in suit and tie would offer you a cigarette at first, then announce he would kill you

Historic photo
Historic photo
zdroj: archív pamätíka

František Turňa was born in 1963 in Brezno. He attended gymnasium in Bratislava. He was expelled from the Slovak University of Economics after first year, due to his political activism. He started to work in film studios at Koliba. In 1984 he started military service in the artillery division in Hranice na Moravě. In 1985, his brother illegally emigrated into the United States of America. In the same year, František was charged with criminal offence of revealing a state secret and transported into detention centre in Bory (close to Tachov). Later, he was relocated to the State Security (StB) Central at the Higher Military Court in Pilsen. He was kept in pre-trail detention for several months. At least, he was dismissed without charge. After being released, he returned to Bory, where he had to serve longer military service as a punishment. After completing the military service, he continued to work in Film Studios Koliba. StB confiscated his passport and he was followed by the secret police. After the Velvet Revolution, he became one of the first tradesmen/self-employed people in Czechoslovakia. He spent 5 years in the United States and in Australia. He currently lives in Slovakia.