"The two investigators who investigated the trial of (Miloš) Blažek (Merkur) flew in from Prague and came to investigate me again. The investigation lasted from about ten o'clock to about five o'clock in the afternoon and they took turns with me. I was given water and tea or something like that, and again I repeated what I had said in Prague. And then they, the main point was they said I had blown it, the investigation. That's what they told me at the time not to tell anybody, in Prague, and that I had violated something. What I knew at the time, the dissidents knew, they knew, they had lawyers, I didn't know anything at the time. And that therefore it's bad in that case, so it may be that I can be a witness - I was investigated - but that I can get paragraph seventy, that's subversion of the republic. Well, and after such a long investigation, all day long, you've got a wife there with a newborn child, you're in eastern Slovakia... and they said, 'Well, but you can do that, so just say you'll cooperate with us.' Well - that was their point. So I signed it."
"They took us for such, that we were victims of those monks, of that ideology. And they just told us to join the Czechoslovak Youth Union, I think it was called the Union of Czechoslovak Youth at the time, and that there they would explain to us the dark things that we believe in and drive it out of our heads. So we were told, basically we didn't really respond to it I guess, because we were told that the Vatican was preparing the Third World War, and all that kind of ideological stuff that ended up in the current media propaganda. I had with me, I didn't even realize it, I had a bag with me that had the boy scout chronicles in it."
"We ran to see because Soviet tanks were coming down that avenue from the terminal station of the tam number eighteen. It was then called the Yugoslav Partisans' Avenue, but I think it was called Podbabská Street at that time. And so the tanks were coming. And there was always somebody who used to sell newspapers on the corner. He was a kind of... he welcomed them... he was a person who was... I always bought the Mladý hlasatel magazine there, Foglar and so on. He was a person, kind of really on the edge of society, I would say. He didn't do very well. He had a newsagent´s there. The kind that closes. And so he was welcoming them. Well, I was looking there, I was observing how it was, people were there... And there was a gentleman next to me and he said, 'Well, this is it, we're fucked.'"
"It was all so perfectly calm. I didn't understand what was going on, and my mother took me and said, 'Come on, you're going to the sweetshop.' That was on the way, when I was walking down that Terronská Street where we lived, towards the end, it ended at the terminal station of the trams number seven and eighteen, back then, so we went to the sweetshop and they always had this cupcake that was made of chocolate, and there was whipped cream in it. And why do I say that? The German soldiers were already there, and they were eating the cakes. Because at that time, one mark was ten crowns. That was immediately... the occupation trend manifested itself like this. And they were seen everywhere, in the sausage shops and so on, just stuffing themselves, so it wasn't that there was any skirmishes that I experienced or any resistance, but there it was as if some uncles from the village came and started eating like at a pig killing."
Jiří Petz was born on 26 July 1932 in Prague-Karlín into the family of Bohumil Petz, an official of the Ministry of Justice, and his wife Milada Petzová. He started school in 1939 in Bubenač, where he spent the whole war. He remembers the arrival of the German troops and their carefree behaviour and purchases after the devaluation of the crown. During the Prague Uprising he helped build barricades and witnessed the post-war violence against German civilians. He viewed the incoming Soviets in May 1945 with apprehension, as there was open talk of communism and gulags at home. He joined the Scout in 1937. After the war he returned to the Mawadani centre and became the troop’s chronicler. After scouting was banned in 1948, the young men met illegally with the later dissident Jiří Nemec, organizing philosophical seminars and buying banned literature. On April 13, 1950, he accidentally witnessed Action K during the raid on a Jesuit monastery. After graduating from secondary school in 1951, he worked as a laboratory technician, then studied medicine and in 1954 transferred to the newly founded Faculty of Hygiene. The turning point came in 1958, when before graduation he signed a binding act under pressure and became a State Security agent. He was to observe to the scout leader Miloš Blažek and eventually provide information in the field of health care. However, he refused to cooperate after he was posted to Slovakia in 1959, faced threats, and eventually left for alternative military service. His file was deposited in the archives in December of that year. From 1961, the witness worked for four years as a district sanitary officer in Tachov, then at the Academy of Sciences at the Cabinet of Theory of Architecture and Environmental Design and later at the Institute of Landscape Ecology. Standardisation brought him interrogations and professional pressures, but nobody demanded his cooperation any more. From 1986, he worked in health statistics at the District National Health Centre (OÚNZ) and the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (ÚZIS) until 1995, when he retired. For a long time only his wife knew about the signing of the collaboration; he did not confide in his daughters until he was 84 years old. In 2026 he was living in Prague.
