Jiří Frank

„Ne, normálně se psalo a jestli můžu říct jednu krásnou vzpomínku. Táta jako voják mohl posílat malinké balíčky a posílal, to byl balíček možná tak desetkrát pět centimetrů. A máma to rozbalila a byly tam kolečka a nevěděla, co to je, tak mi to dala nahraní, já jsem si s tím hrál a písek jsme měli u baráčku, tak tam to [...] Asi tak za půl roku přijel táta na dovolenou a sháněl se potěch kolečkách a máma říkala, že mi to dala na hraní. Tak jsme šli do toho písku, vybrali jsem kolečka a to byly vlastně hodiny, táta si dovezl ciferník, dovezl i kyvadlo a z těch koleček, které byly v tom písku, sestavil krásné hodiny. Měly název Moskva."

„Ti je řezali. Však proto jsem to říkal, ti je řezali jak hrom, a jak jsem říkal, dostali jednu deku a tu měli proti slunci, proti dešti a na spánek. Takže jídlo chabé, tam umírali opravdu v tom lágru po desítkách. Nebylo jídlo, nebylo nic. A jakmile něco se tentoval, tak dostal ránu pendrekem. Takže jak říkají, že Američani je jako brali na milost, tady aspoň v tomto táboře ne."

“[In the origins of the] TOM group I felt all kinds of pressure on me. We founded the group in 1971 and continued with it. In 1972 there were inspections of all technical-economic workers. I didn’t pass it and our director literally told me: ‘Give notice because if the company fires you then no one will ever hire you again.’ So I quit and still – everywhere I applied I got rejected. ‘After reading your political evaluation we cannot accept you for the required position.’”

“I once had a conversation when I was still in the Dřevopodnik company. That they would like to talk to me. – About what? – ‘Well, you’ll learn that when we get there.’ Because I had known it was the State Security and that they sometimes took someone in and never let him go, I told it to my wife. She was pregnant at that time with our daughter Marie. The meeting was by the lime tree near Holajka. A Tatra 603 came and the two of them came out. We said hi to each other. - ‘Come, sit, let’s go.’ We arrived at the Moscow hotel in Zlín, they had their little room there. We were there for two hours. I had one beer on their bill. One of them had a tape recorder and held a microphone down under the table. - ‘You can put the microphone on the table because I have nothing to hide.’ The started, saying I worked in an anti-state Scout group and that I had been seen by the campfire. In short, they just kept repeating that to get something out of me. - ‘Please, if you saw me by the campfire then it must be a photomontage.’ I didn’t know then that it could be a picture from our summer camp. But they corrected it by saying it had been taken on Ing. Vémola’s cottage where I had been part of a group. - ‘But please, where is this supposed cottage of Ing. Vémola? I don’t know.’ And that was the end of my interrogation.”

“He went through the entire Eastern Front. He had a map at home, it got lost, where he showed me their advancement. All the battles you read about in the newspaper: Orel, Jazma, he was practically all the way in Moscow. There they had to start gradually retreating back. He didn’t return via Stalingrad but via Kiev and Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria. There they got caught by the U.S. Army. He got to a POW camp in Strasbourg. It was tough, soldiers really died out in great numbers there. They got one blanket against sun, rain and for sleeping. My father was really lucky that he lay near the kettle in which lunch was prepared. As they peeled potatoes, he stuck the skins on the kettle and made something like chips out of it. That’s how he got some extra food. Then he was lucky again when a French businessman came and needed a cabinetmaker. My father was trained in cabinetmaking. So he was picked and taken to the French businessman’s home. There he worked until his repatriation.”