Eva Vaňková

"Running away as an entire family and leaving dad was totally impossible at the time. I had an opportunity to go abroad, so in January 51, I left home. My father was the Czechoslovak Republic's Ambassador to East Germany at the time. The Berlin Wall was not there yet, and I was very lucky to go to visit dad in Berlin for Christmas. I packed a little suitcase, stole some money from dad's purse, took a cab, and went over to Germany's west zone."

"At the time, we would have lived like the gilded youth, rather than go to Komsomol. That was foreign to us. We tried to live the life of normal young people between 1945 and 48. The political situation kept deteriorating all the time. We were also quite philosophical at the time. We were sixteen years old, we knew everything and discussed everything. We decided to live as allies to America, to be Anglophiles. We had our minds set on this and Soviet Union and leftists didn't fit with our vision at all. We wore US flags on our coats, which must have made our dad really 'happy'."

"Our political debates were very unpleasant; at first, dad would try, in a very friendly way, to explain the dialectical materialism to me, and how important and fair a concept it is. I disagreed, so we would argue, and it was ugly. Then, when I fled, it must have been a big blow for dad, personally and politically as well, of course. When I learned about the trial, I lived with the notion that maybe I had caused it all - dad being a member of the group - for a long time. Now, years later, I understand that it had nothing to do with that, because by then, the trial must have been prepared and the people chosen - and not because an eighteen-year old girl left the country for a boy - but because they needed a big trial."