Jiří Dvořák

"I still remember - in Malechov, when the elections were held in 1986, the whole committee came to our house with the ballot box and asked us if we would vote. So I remember at that time I told them, 'Look, there's no choice. We're not going to vote for the Communists, and there's no choice.' But they said, I remember, 'Oh please, we're not going to have the hundred percent in this village.' That they weren't going to cast one hundred percent of the ballots. And we said, 'It can't be helped.' By that time my wife and I were living there, we weren't married yet, but we were living together. We said, 'I'm sorry, but we're just not going to vote.' So they finally left and then after some time, I know my wife said she was somewhere finding out what the turnout was. It turned out that Malechov presented himself as having had one hundred percent. And I don't know how they did it."

"At that time it was still a bit of a tease from State Security. I was in Poland with a friend and I brought back a badge that the Polish scouts had. And on it was a cross and on it was a lily. So I put it on my jacket at the time and it was on a screw, on a nut. So I tightened it with pliers and I wore it on my jacket. And one time I was walking down what is now American Avenue in Pilsen and a middle-aged man stopped me, lifted up the lapel like this, said he was from Security, to show him my ID. I gave him my ID and he noticed that I had the badge. And he said, "What's that I've got there? I said I brought it from Poland. And he said, 'Well, you can't wear that.' And to take it off. And I said, 'Well, you can't take it off, I got it off with pliers at home.' And no, no, so he took it and grabbed my jacket and he tried it for so long until he managed to loosen it and took it from me and said I'd come back to them later. So that was the first thing, I got an envelope with a summons for questioning, up to Klatovská Street. So I went there, and the interrogation took place: who I was in contact with, where the person was, where he went, what friends he had, what his opinions were. During the interrogation, there were more than one of them, it had some kind of scenario. So then he typed it up, not everybody was proficient, so it took a while to type it up on the typewriter. And one had time, one had a little bit more time to think about what to say and what not to say. So they had you read the statement, sign it. And when he was filing it in the folders and putting it in the drawer, the file, I could see that the drawer had a 'defectivce youth' sign on it. So that's actually how I remember getting into the system, so to speak, and they've found you."

"One of the first things that when one joined, they came to join the unionists, the Socialist Youth Union [SSM]. Well, I refused that. That was me saying, 'I don't need to be in that union, I don't even want to be there.' And it was such an ongoing, constant struggle. Maybe until the third year, when they forced you. If I may digress, I know that my classmates from primary school who were going to secondary school, back in ninth grade, their class teacher called them in and told them that if they didn't join SSM, she wouldn't give recommendation for a grammar school. So that's actually how it worked. Well, so you were already standing out like that. I didn't do it initially to put myself in the role of some kind of fighter against the regime. But when I saw the hypocrisy that was there, and when I saw that in the family or among friends they were completely different worlds, it just gradually sort of dawned on me that I wanted nothing to do with it. So gradually I took steps like that, naturally. Of course, it takes you out of that society in a way. But it wasn't intentional. You didn't want to be singled out. One wanted to live whatever ideas one had, or as one's values were formed and one was actually entering into life."