Tomáš Bergman

"I drove a lot, and I'd blow through my paycheck in a month or two. Then Václav Benda offered me financial help. He said he had the resources to help. When I had spent it all, I came to see Václav Benda. We talked for an hour or so, discussing politics, the church and the situation... Then he sat down at the table, took like 3000 crowns from his drawer and gave it to me so that I could go on driving and do what was needed. It was a great help to me. It enabled me to ignore money and go anywhere. For example, they sent me to get some documents, and I just took the car and went. I picked up the docs, brought them to Prague and delivered the samizdat. It was a big help for me. First of all, intellectually: it gave me an insight into the Prague dissent circles. Second, it helped me financially. Also, I would like to say I didn't feel like a dissident. I felt like someone helping out those who bore the brunt of the opposition. I was the one in the grey zone, and when it was necessary, I would drive somewhere... Until the publication of the samizdat Velehrad, which could be deemed a kind of dissent. Other than that, I considered myself a lowly labourer just helping out."

"Everything was extremely limited for us and we were aware of that. Occasionally we would get a book from, say, the Christian Academy in Rome, and it showed us the real world was somewhere else. It lived differently. I had no passport. Whenever I applied for a passport or an exit permit, I was told that me having a passport was not in the interest of the socialist homeland. We were restricted and lived as best we could."