Ivana Kettnerová

"My father was in the Bory prison in Pilsen from 12 June 1949 until May 1950. He worked there. They were shredding feathers there for days. He told me that when they didn't meet the daily quota, they got less food. He was put in solitary confinement. But it wasn't a solitary confinement for one person, there were eight of them. They had four straws mattresses on the floor so they had to share them. And apparently that's how he got ill with tuberculosis. He was seriously ill from May 1950. He was transferred to the Bory hospital, where there was a pulmonary ward for prisoners on a top floor. And in this difficult time, it turned out that there were also good and brave people. When my father was escorted by a guard to the hospital for examination, a patient from Kralovice, who knew our family well, recognized him and told my mother that she saw my father in the Bory hospital. And then Dr. Kubík from the pulmonary department arranged for my mother to see my father several times in his office. My mother came there as a patient through one entrance and my father was brought to the ambulance by a guard who had to stay outside the office. Dr. Kubík thus allowed my parents to meet several times. He must have been a terribly brave man, because had it been revealed, he would certainly have been punished. And so it happened that I was born on 14 June 1951, two years after my father's arrest."

"It was a big shock for my mother, and for everybody else, because my father didn't do anything. They didn't know why he was arrested. He was taken to pre-trial detention in Pankrác in Prague, where he spent three months. There he learnt about his alleged anti-state group involvement. Another member of the group was Antonín Vinš, a teacher from Kralovice, whom he met once and who offered to get him back into the air force. Apart from him, he did not know anyone else from the group he was tried with. He was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour and he was transferred to the Bory prison in Pilsen."