Pavel Klein

* 1956

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  • "I was such a provocateur. My friend and I tattooed the USA on our wrists and I remember being on a tram, summer, short sleeves. And there was a Czech soldier there and he ordered the tram to stop, that he would not travel with such an element. The tram stopped between two stops and he told me to get off. I refused to get off. A security patrol showed up, got me out of the tram and took me to the office. It was interesting that people - probably as they were rushing from work - were against me. It wasn't 'leave him alone' or anything like that. 'Just give him one more, give him one for me.' And there were shouts like that. And they were shouting at me in the staffroom, so I spontaneously thought, 'It's not even finished yet! It's missing the H at the beginning, the comma above the A and the K at the end, like Husák.' Such a boyish thing to do, but I never missed an opportunity to say what I thought. I know there was an elderly gentleman at State Security who said to me, 'I gave this hand to Gottwald.' And I said, 'Well, I'd better go and wash up right now.' And he got so angry! Apparently Gottwald was his idol. He got angry and wanted to kick me. There were always several of them. And the searches, or when they came to interrogate me, it was always at midnight or two in the morning. I wondered if they wanted overtime or why they couldn't take me in broad daylight. I remember they did the search while my mother was sleeping in her bedroom. I had bought a typewriter for 500 bons in Tuzex at the time, and they confiscated it because I had samizdat books that I had brought from Prague. So they confiscated it and nobody commented on it."

  • "I remember one time they slapped me until blood came out of my nose, and I said to them, 'Leave that on the wall, it can be spectacular for the next interrogation.' And once, they were beating me with a truncheon, and I got under the table so that the truncheon wouldn't have such an impact, so they were beating my calves and pulling me out by my legs. I was cheeky, I hated them! I remember they had a motto, you laugh at it today, 'Cool head, flaming heart and absolutely clean hands,' which was probably some kind of their motto."

  • "I had a girlfriend who lived in that house and her father was a Czech officer. And they were putting Soviet junior officers among the Czech people. And the tenement house was probably owned by the army. I was at her place, it was the twenty-first [of August 1975], I was walking down the stairs past the flat of the Russian soldier, and now it came to me, it was spontaneous. I came back and borrowed a marker. To this day I don't remember what I wrote, it was something like occupant, go home, or something like that. Unfortunately, it's not written here in the judgment, it's just that it's mentioned in the investigation file. So I don't remember, but it was something about occupiers and go home or something like that. Well, the next day I went back to my girlfriend's place, it was erased, so I borrowed the same marker again and wrote it in again. And then when I came back from her place, the stairwell was full of cops, asking me if I saw anything and who I was. I had to identify myself and I said, 'Well, I wrote that.' I didn't hide it, I didn't deny it. That was my opinion, so I said it. Well, that's where it all started. I went to the interrogation, so I was there all night, I talked to them, I got a few slaps. They let me go, and then the court came and they convicted me. I was given a suspended sentence, six months imprisonment with two years probation, well, just suspended. And then it was going on. That was in '75, and then I met other people in Prague and it was on."

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    Švédsko, 13.11.2023

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There were always a few State Security men. After Asanace, only good things happened to me

Pavel Klein
Pavel Klein
photo: Witness´s archive

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.