Petr Vymyslický

P. V.: "They kept asking about the priest: ´What did the priest promise you? What did you do for the priest? How come that...?´ As for my interrogation, they were primarily asking me questions about the priest. And, when it didn’t fit into what they had beaten out from the others, they would say: ´If you think that we will spare you because you are young, you are greatly mistaken.´ I got slapped so brutally that my eyes winked, and he ordered me: ´Get out!´ I was thus standing outside and they brought in those from the other cell. Our guys were in there: the Pospíšil brothers, Matúš, Mana, Lenhart, the postman, who was..." Interviewer: "Could you hear the interrogations, too?" P. V.: "Our cell was right next to the interrogation room. They were beating them so much, you couldn’t stand it. Shouting, screaming, beating them. Especially in the cells numbered thirty and up… At that time I didn’t know that this electricity (torture by electrical current) really worked, and screaming was heard constantly from there. What they did was impossible to endure."

P. V.: "They stole all our things, and they began restricting us. We were not allowed to own anything, they didn’t let us go anywhere, and we thought: ´If they are destroying the peasants and breaking families, we will do the same to them!´ We were disseminating pamphlets, and what we also did was drill holes into wooden logs and Jožka Pospíšil inserted gunpowder inside. We covered it with a piece of wood and threw the log among their firewood. And when they – it was Polínek (?), the biggest communist of all – started a fire under the stove when they woke up and wanted to fry eggs... They worked in the brickworks in Hodonín. The cartridge which was hidden inside the log blasted out the plates from his stove and black snow began falling on the eggs... That was one of the activities what we did... They did bad things to people, later they had their informers here who were spying where we were going, and the situation was becoming serious." Interviewer: "Did you know who was spying on you?" P. V.: "It was known. Emil, Kučera and Jordan, everyone knew about them. The Secret Police had this group of people and they paid them money. Later we knew about it. We did many things wrong. We wrote on the screen in the cinema: ´Don’t believe the communists! Communists are the traitors of our nation.´ And somebody else wrote down below it: ´Every communist will end up like this!´ Right on the screen. A film called She Defends the Homeland was screened. It was horrible. It was repeated over and over, because there was no other film, just this She Defends the Homeland all the time. We wanted some other film to be shown, and not just this. It was about a heroic Soviet woman who shot the entire division of Germans! When they were hanging her, one of them still fired at her as she was at the gallows. She dropped down to the ground immediately... such a stupid film." Interviewer: "And your inscription was meant to be an allusion to that?" P. V.: "Yes. I wrote it with Karel Bílek. And another thing we did. There were no balls. The communist organized a dance and we said: ´Just to remind you that we are here…´ There was a high electric pole behind the village. We took a chain and walked all the way behind the forester’s lodge and I and Jožka Pospíšil threw the chain on the electric wires. We thought: ´Now you have it, you Bolshevik bastards!´ At these balls, there was always a brass band playing first in front of the pub, and then they would go in and the fun would start. Jožka and I said to each other: ´Play a solo and that’s it.´ We did a countdown to see when it would happen, and we timed it just right. They haven’t even started dancing, and they were in darkness. That was just one of the things we did. The place was between a field and a forest, and you wouldn’t believe what a spectacle it was – blue and black flames were flashing out if it. It was huge, and it was a high-voltage line and there was a great fire before it burnt down, it was a beautiful sight to behold. The communists lost this one. They were waiting outside the pub and it hasn’t occurred to them that we, little Scouts, could have done this. Well, not all the Scouts knew about it, either. I knew about it, then Staňa..." P. V.’s wife: "You were going to scare them." P. V.: "Yes, we did that, too. We were scaring them. What we did was that when they were going home from their communist meetings, we would throw a blanket over somebody and give him a threshing. Things like that, this was our way of resistance." Interviewer: "And these people were all local communists?" P. V.: "Yes. There were only policemen, who were not local communists. There were some of these communists and then the rest who joined them."

P. V.: "There was nothing they could beat out of me. They asked: ´Where is Vetejška?´ I replied: ´How should I know this?´ - ´Where is the priest? Who instigated you to this, what did they tell you to do? Is he your spiritual leader?!´ They were after this all the time: ´You are not allowed to speak about the priest, aren't you?´ I said: ´We are allowed to speak about priests, but just like about any other men. You can’t force me to tell lies about him. Why?´ - ´Don’t worry, we’ll see.´ At one time they didn’t have any qualms about me. It was a kind of an interim. This was done by the members of the Secret Police (StB) who were there. As for the wardens, there was Čejka, a tall guy, who would for example even give us water when we didn’t have any, then there was another one, a crouched man… As I see it now, I think that they have already done their work, and since it was proceeding as they wished it to be, they would then leave us alone on Saturdays and Sundays."

P. V.: "She was shouting: ´On the first day of spring, when the youth from all over the world shakes hands in brotherhood and peace, this gang enters the courtroom...´ God, what did she say... So this is what it looked like." Interviewer.: "And who was the prosecutor?" P. V.: "Brožová." Interviewer: "That Brožová? (i.e. Ludmila Brožová-Polednová) I thought that she was only an associate judge." P. V.: "No, no. And I would also like to see that girl, who... from whom I learnt that I wouldn’t be hanged. I kept looking at her and asking her. I was making signs to her, beginning with one and finishing with number twenty! Only then she nodded that it was so. Thus I knew that I would be sentenced to twenty years." Interviewer: "You were doing this in the courtroom?" P.V.: "She was a young girl, a nice girl. My hearing was already over, and I already knew that I wouldn’t be hanged, and I was feeling restless and I was looking at the people in the court room. There were our parents, friends, the militia from the factory – people paid money to get in, just like in theatre." Interviewer: "How did the people in the courtroom act?" P. V.: "I would like to see the pictures from there, it was even filmed. There were some bastards shouting: ´Hang them! Hang them!´ There were schoolchildren: ´Children, what you see here...´ – ´So that you, you outcasts of the human society, may know what you have done!´ So much was said there... As I said, I was the fifth from the eighteen of us. They began with Vetejška, then they sentenced Mojmír Bečka, then another one, and I was the fifth one." Interviewer: "And Vetejška was sentenced to death by hanging?" P. V.: "He was to be hanged." Interviewer: "What did you think about these death penalties?" P. V.: "We didn’t get to them, and while the court was in session, we still had some hope that there would not be that many capital punishments... The court and the prison were in Hodonín. And people were shouting at us through an open window there, and policemen had to chase them away. Even after we returned from the courtroom and were taken down there, the wardens’ attitude towards us... nobody expected it. Nobody expected that the sentences would be so severe. Two people were sentenced to thirty years, two got a life term, I got twenty years, uncle and Pavel four years, Melanie (Klouparová) got a life term, she was pregnant and she was sentenced to life imprisonment, and then there was a girl from Slovakia, who was sentenced to five years, and the priest to fifteen years." Interviewer: "What was the priest’s name?" P.V.: "Pořízek. Jaromír Pořízek."