There were always a few State Security men. After Asanace, only good things happened to me
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Pavel Klein was born on 7 April 1956 in Olomouc as Pavel Kadlec. His father Josef worked as a baker, his mother Gisela - originally from Slovakia - worked in a factory canteen in Olomouc. From his youth, he was not in line with the communist ideology, which he made publicly known through partial provocations. After the Olomouc nine-year school he started an apprenticeship, but he did not finish it and started to work in a printing house. In the 1970s he started a friendship with the painter and actor Josef Hlinomaz, whom he used to visit in Prague at weekends. During his short stays, he established contacts with the Prague underground and dissent. In 1975, he was given a suspended sentence for rioting after he wrote a note on the door of a Soviet officer’s apartment condemning the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. In 1979, he signed the Charter 77 Declaration. As part of the regime’s subsequent persecution, he became a victim of the so-called “Asanace” action, directed by State Security, which systematically forced Charta signatories to emigrate. In 1980 he emigrated to Sweden, where he received an education and a job, started a family and changed his surname. After the Velvet Revolution he visited the Czech Republic several times, but Sweden remained his home.
