Vojtěch Holub

"Then in the autumn we were slowly closing down because a time of persecution had begun. The comrades became suspicious about the TOM troops and they began... They likely got an order from their leaders and started investigating one by one. The scout troops that were in Plzeň, the White Arrow, individual troops and others... We were lucky to be the last in line. The investigation began in late 1955 or early 1956. The first one to go was there all the time. His name was Ivan Sedinikov. His mother was German and, all through the fifties, she had applied for an official eviction. They kept rejecting her, then finally they allowed her and she moved away. A few years later, Ivan went to see her with his wife after he got married, and they let them go to Cheb, then pulled them out of the train, accused them of planning to escape - which was probably true - and locked them up. Not her, though; she was pregnant, but Ivan got, I think, a suspended sentence for an attempt to leave the country. Just imagine - for trying to leave the country: that's unthinkable today - and he got a suspended sentence for trying to leave. The prosecutor appealed the ruling, so then he got thirteen months in jail instead."

"At that time, people formed these 'Foglar Clubs', children's clubs, hundreds or even thousands of them. Of course, we played at that too, these clubs came into being, went out of existence, it was all intertwined. In the end, we stayed with the Blue Condor club, and a few boys from that club were also members of the scout troop White Arrow, camping in Svojšín. That was described in literature. These beautiful, carefree childhood times basically lasted until 1950, when suddenly the Czech Junák organization, which belonged to the world Scout organization, was abolished and banned. At that point, we had our club and we continued on, but it was no longer official; we were actually a kind of a troop and we called ourselves the Condors. It became official, fortunately, because there was a way out that was called the Tourist Youth Troops, TOM was the acronym. A lot of leaders, and also former boy and girl scouts took refuge in these Tourist Youth Troops, and they actually formed officially under the umbrella of some sports club, the Tourist Youth Troop. We also founded one of these clubs."