Božena Valová

„I’m telling you, it happened in that year, it had to be summer of forty-nine, because at that time, it was the worst time, those fifties. And the boy it was who crossed the border because the border line between Austria and the community where we lived, it’s just a few kilometres, and the boy, he was a student and it was maybe a student of medicine and it was the brother of the cook of Father Havránek, I’ll tell you another name because Father Havránek was in jail as well. So it was brother of the cook of this Father Havránek. And there were many those who were locked up.“

„And now, attention, the border areas. And it was enough that… it was all spies, everyone talked about spies. As children, we played soldiers and spies, obviously, and such. Mom just said There’s a guy there, who is that and before she got home, she had her house searched because Mrs. Hálové, who knows whether she might be in contact with some spies, right. And that was when dad was, I don’t know, maybe two or three years inprison. And when mom went to the village, people crossed the street to the other side. Some knew why there went to the other side of the road, some were afraid to be seen with her.”

„Look, dad was, at that time when he was sentenced, so, he was a guy in his prime years, one could say. So, count it yourself how old he was, twelve, forty-eight. Or, he was born in the year twelve and sentenced in forty-eight, so he, for example, when I asked him, at that time I was already married, an adult, when parents lived in Da4ice, so I said: ‘Daddy, what’s that here with your finger?’ And he said: ‘I got my finger pinched by a trolley. But we had a surgeon for that, and what a man he was!‘ So there were knowledgeable people among the prisoners. I don’t know whether he was a prison doctor but I know that dad, when he returned, he had no teeth at all. He had no teeth at all but I saw him maybe once that he used a prosthesis, that he’d pull it out. He wore it all the time. We did not know that he was toothless. But he mentioned, like: ‘Well, yeah, you know, they were in the hole.’ He said that, hole. It was some, probably, imprisoned for breaking some rules but I think that dad, as he was a strong young man, that he did not have that many issues in jail as those who were weak, ill or some such.”

„I remember how we went for a visit with mom and with aunt, I was five or six years old, I don’t remember how old I was. We arrived somewhere at night, we got off the train, it was dark everywhere and it was not a town, it was an edge of a town. It was dark and now what.It was maybe two in the morning, eleven in the evening, I don’t know. The visit was maybe at half past eight so what we were supposed to do? So mom told aunt, look, there’s a light on, let’s try and knock there. So they went and knocked at some door at a house where a light was still on and asked those people if they could please stay there until the morning. That they’re going to a visit to the prison. So, do come in, do come in. And, like, we stayed with those people until morning and we went to the prison for a visit at half past eight. And I remember as a child, when those prisoners in the prison garb, they were in an underground room, there was a window with bars, with no glass, and those blokes stood there, I don’t know, there were many in the room, maybe twenty or thirty, I don’t know. And now, I was small and they saw me and dad saw me, right. Dad knew me because he was in that jail for maybe two or three years. Now, those blokes let him to the bars so that we could hold hands and I screamed bloody murder, I was afraid of him, and, like, this, this is my memory of the Communist jail.”