Margita Zimanová

“My mother wrote her husband a letter when she was in custody. As you know, they had neither paper, nor pencils there. Nowadays they even have televisions in the prisons. So, my mother took some toilet paper and something which looked like red ink. In the custody, women went to the bathroom firstly. Later men went to the bathroom after them. So, my mother left her letter, written on the toilet paper as if with the red ink, for her husband next to the soap. But my mother was investigated because of the red ink - she was asked to tell the name of the person who gave it to her and where he/she gave it to her. But my mother told them: ‘Well, you can analyse it and examine whether it is red ink.’ But it wasn’t red ink. When my mother had her period, she took a quill and wrote the letter for my father with her own blood.”

“Memoirs of my husband, Pavol Valent, born on July 27, 1914, in Zvolen, living then on Vazovova street 2, in Bratislava. On January 14, 1952, it was the first day of our holiday. At 9 a.m. the bell rang. When I opened the door, I saw my husband’s good friends, who asked him to go to the office with them. After the long discussion my husband told me he had to go to straighten out some matters. After two hours the bell rang again. It was odd, because my husband had keys for our flat. When I opened the door, I saw four men, the State Security members, and a woman wearing a white smock and the State Security uniform. ‘What happened to my husband?’ I asked them. ‘Nothing,’ one of them told me. I was just asked to put on my coat and to go with them. ‘And what will happen to my children?’ ‘We will look after them, don’t worry, you will be back here soon.’ Finally, I came back after more than seven years.”

“Well, depending on her actual mood, my mother talked about her reminiscences of the remand, but it was difficult for her. Of course, they were battered. With her cellmate she spent nine months in a cell under the ground. She was emaciated, she didn’t see the light and she even talked to a rat. In September, 1953 when she was expected to go to the court, they fed her up and she had to learn what they had told her. So, she wasn’t allowed to tell the truth, she had to lie. She had to confess that it was her fault, because she made a mistake. She had no other choice.”

“When I got off the car, I was led to the first floor, where four men wearing civilian dress were waiting for me. One of them started to interrogate me. When I was asked where my brother was, suddenly I knew what was going on. They spent three hours cross-examining me. Suddenly they started to shout at me and they threatened me to spend three days in shits if I didn’t start to talk to them. At the end of the cross-examination one of the State Security members told them to finish it up. Then I saw my husband, it was terrible. He wore handcuffs, he was beaten, his face was bruised and he had a black eye. ‘It’s enough,’ one of the men said and my husband was taken away. Interrogation lasted for four days, from dawn to dusk. I slept on the ground in my cell covered up only with my coat. On the fifth day I was given a prison uniform. In the evening I got paillasse with a little straw inside and in the morning they took it away. When they were interrogating us, they used to cover our eyes, because it was more interesting for them. After the interrogation a remand followed. It was a damp hole full of rats. Later starvation followed. It usually lasted for three days. Then I was irradiated by a strong light bulb, etc. It all finished on September 11, 1952, when we both had a trial.”

“As I have already mentioned, my godfather, Vojtech Danko, had expressed his disagreement with the socialist regime and he was threatened with the prison. One gentleman advised him to flee abroad, so he asked my father to help him, because he worked in the Ministry of the Interior. At first, we had travelled a lot, because my dad had worked as a technical manager of radio transmitters near Prešov and in Veľké Kostoľany, in Košice, but later he worked in the Ministry of the Interior. As a result, my godfather knew he had an access to the roads that led to Vienna. The whole family used to go to the cottage on Viedenská street, in Petržalka. I remember me as a nine-year-old girl running there together with my siblings. My daddy was a hunter; he was a member of a hunting organisation in Petržalka. Finally, my godfather fled across the border successfully. Since my daddy had helped my godfather to flee the country, my family was punished cruelly. My godfather stayed abroad. He was fretting there for the rest of his life and we were fretting here, as well. We all had hard lives.”