Václav Peřich

"The terribly interesting thing was that people, as they came down - they always had to be on set at, I don't know, 7:30 in the morning or something - and there were a lot of them for the whole time that visitors were allowed. And nobody spoke a word to anybody. First of all, not to show his face, and secondly, he himself was full of anxiety as to how it was going to be, if it was going to turn out all right. And everyone knew that the waiting room was under surveillance too. Of course, after the visits, the same company then gathered in the waiting room at the station when people were distracted. But that was a completely different atmosphere, everybody unpacked what they had brought in the hope of being able to give to their loved ones in prison: goodies, cigarettes, I don't know, chocolate and things like that. They were socially offering it to each other in the waiting room and telling each other the stories. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't be able to reconstruct it in any way. But it's a fact that none of the films I've seen about that time have captured anything like that. And it's an incredible contrast, terribly striking, the amazing rigidity of that waiting for the summons to visit and the amazing conviviality and openness and warmth of those people who, knowing that they were all affected in the same way, are now waiting for the train and the return home. Terribly, terribly interesting, terribly impressive and, from my point of view, as yet undescribed."

"The kids usually, well sometimes they do, but we didn't experience the arrest because my dad got arrested at work. He was an archivist, he went to work in the morning and didn't come back in the evening. There was some confusion about it, and my mom only found out after the fact that he had been arrested and was in custody. There was a trial that was then expected to take place - June July August - about three months later. It was, for the record, what I call 'getting even with the minions of the previous system'. All 'former people' like the former owner of the law firm, the former manager of the local credit union, the former theatre director, the former wholesaler... But they were never directly class enemies, they were 'minions of class enemies'. I'm convinced that the mechanism of the emergence of such trials was that it was necessary to frighten the rest of the population and find a suitable way to organise something with these 'exes' that could be passed off as a treasonous group. When one looks at it with completely normal eyes, it's downright unbelievable. They were all old gentlemen who met in a cafe now and then and told each other a joke at most. But that wasn't the point. The point was that they were the more well-known citizens of that small-town environment, and everybody noticed. And they were all reasonably frightened, wondering if something might be against them as well."