Josef Vozáb

"I wanted to go from the Lesser Town, from Mr Palouš to my sister in Ďáblice just for a short visit. When I got off the bus in Ďáblice, I noticed such subtly suspicious gentlemen, and my suspicions were confirmed when I arrived at the block of flats where my sister was, and they got into the lift with me and waited for me to press the button with the appropriate floor. Then they pressed the floor down, so they got off before me. And I, when I got off for a few seconds up there, I could hear them whispering something, and my sister wasn't home. Anyway, there was this big shopping centre in Ďáblice called Ládví, it's still there, probably, and she was the manager of the shoe shop there, and I thought she already knew who I was ringing up anyway, so I went to see her in the shoe shop. And we talked there for a while and then she came up with the idea, 'Hey, don't go through the shop. I've got a back exit, you can use the back exit.' Why not? I went out the back exit and now I saw some gentlemen gesticulating animatedly. To them it was clear evidence that I was trying to escape, so then they linked up with me quite officially and kept on following me, they just had someone to link me up with, they were very disappointed when they found out who. They still let me get back on the bus to Florenc to take the bus to Vary. There, afterwards, at Florenc, a uniformed young officer asked me to show my documents, took down my personal details and when asked what was going on, said, 'I don't know, I'm supposed to check you', and of course it was clear to me. So then a few days later I got a summons to State Security."

"The military service - it was just the seventies, when there were a lot of convinced anti-communists in my generation, when we were still a generation when it didn't pay to have a career and show enthusiasm for socialism. And there we had this one arch-enemy, the soldiers who represented the regime for us. So we always tried to outsmart them somehow. And one basically goes into some long-standing rails there, which means that only the most necessary things were done, and only the most necessary things were done sloppily. And the very best soldier was the one who could avoid any kind of compulsory activity, the so-called holing up. Whoever was the best at holing up was the most popular with the unit. Well, we were kind of good at it. Well, I had the added advantage afterwards that there was an army band that had a saxophone player drop out, and they asked me, since I had that conservatory, if I could play the saxophone, and I said no, but I played a little flute and clarinet, so if you'd lend me something, I could learn to play it in two weeks and we could go to those music parties somewhere. So I managed to do that, so then for about six months before they found a replacement, I would get out of the barracks with them twice a month and we'd go play at a wedding or something. That kind of cheesy songs."