Petra Parkánová

"At the maternity hospital, the head nurse came to see me after I gave birth to Anička. She took me aside, put her hands on my shoulders, and said, 'Look, you can't manage with this. I have to report it to social services.' Instead of thinking about some kind of help, or how they could increase our financial support... So, social services announced they would come. But Anička had a heart condition, some kind of hole where the blood was flowing back, and we had regular check-ups. Social services said they'd come on a specific day. I told them not to come that day, as we had a check-up in Tachov. We left early in the morning because we had to be there early, we were in a rush. We got back from Tachov, just sat down, and the doorbell rang. Social services arrived. The breakfast things were still on the table, dishes unwashed in the sink, the beds unmade — and in they came. The social workers were really something. One of them looked around and said, 'Well, Mrs. Parkánová, this is definitely not what I expected.'"

"All of a sudden, it was a complete escort, there were a lot of cops in the yard at once and that means a search warrant. We still had the curtains drawn. We were just getting up. And now they have to... I wanted them to take their shoes off. But that wasn't pleasant to smell. It was a bit of a joke, we felt like nothing could happen to us. But then when they started going into our personal things, into our underwear in the closet, when they were going through it, I found it a bit disgusting. It was very unpleasant. The second thing was that they started confiscating all the documents about the Charter. We asked... And they said they were going to look for drugs. They had a drug dog sniffing around. We said, if you're looking for drugs, why are you taking these documents? The guy with this smile, because he and we knew he was talking nonsense, said, 'Because drugs are smuggled in these papers.' Just to make a point. I think he must have known he was talking nonsense."

“We were afraid at the time that they would set us up with marijuana to get a pretext for the house search. When they started seizing the various Charter documents, I asked them why they were taking the documents when they were searching for marijuana. And one cop said with a grin, ‘Because the drugs are trafficked in the documents.’ He knew he was saying bullshit, but he said it anyway, just to reply. They seized a lot of samizdat stuff, including samizdat fairy tales, a copy of Bambi that we got. A lot of photos, films and tapes. When they were taking the papers, you thought it was still okay. But then they got into our clothes. We considered them to be dirty, and suddenly they are rummaging through your underwear with their hands. That was very unpleasant. I wanted to give them a bit of a hard time, so I told them they could only go to the back room with their shoes off. So then we had to stick out their stinking socks… Eventually, we had to laugh because, while they were searching everything so diligently, they didn’t think about closing the kitchen door, and there was a bag full of samizdat stuff behind the door.”

“When we came to the parsonage in Chotiněves the cops were already there. They checked us all, we all had to show our IDs, and we were afraid that godfather Havel would not show up. But he went a different way, across fields, which was very smart, and he just suddenly appeared. He went straight to the church, so maybe they didn’t even see him. And it was funny, because Havel didn’t have children and didn’t know how to hold our little Havel… he held him like a parcel.”

“I was home alone with children, sheep and goats – our farm. I was so full of the emotion, you know, so elated and I could not tell anyone, so I went to the sty and told the sheep and goats: ‘Hey girls, it’s over!’ They were the only souls I could say it to, get it out of my system. Vendula went to school in Janov at the time and wore the tricolour. She had straight As – she was always a great student – and her teacher reportedly asked her: ‘Do you think it will help you get better grades?’ And Vendula couldn’t understand. Most likely they all thought it was just temporary.”

“When I was sick in hospital, Vendy Bartůšek brought me some chicken soup. He was really a friend in a way. I never really wanted to know who told on us. I thought I wouldn’t ruin my life with that. But then I learned that it was Vendy. Someone told Viktor [husband]. I never even went to have a look myself. He collaborated with StB, though I don’t know when. It might be interesting to find out. I am detached from it now, maybe I could take it. He also did us wrong after the revolution; when we were living in Lukov, he came and said he wanted to do business but was not successful, and asked us to secure his loan with Lukovem. So because he would always really help us, we thought he was a friend, and being a guarantor was not so risky during the communist era… and we were not used to the market economy – you know, someone taking you home away just like that, we never thought about it – we pledged the house as security. He was caught on the Slovak border later on. Someone must have told on him, because the TV was right there. He went to prison for five years. They let us know that he owed 800,000 and that if we don’t repay in a month our house will be up for auction. We thought, ‘Oh no – we lost a house to communists, and now we will lose it again?’”