Milena Sedláčková

“I said that I was innocent. You will not say it to anyone, unless they prove you guilty, you are innocent, right? I came there and started by saying that I did not know anything. And when I saw the young men there, I mean those who would beat you, the punchers, well then... And then they told me things that nobody knew about but me. So I said to myself: ‘I won´t let them beat me’, so I said it. They disappeared at that moment and an old man came, a former worker, an experienced man, he deserved it. And he treated me quite in a human way.”

“And meanwhile really horrible things happened because his dad was imprisoned. It was sometime after the lawsuit against Milada Horáková... Well and they imprisoned him and his mum did not have any money because mothers did not use to work, it was not like nowadays. And he studied and it is clear that as far as politics was concerned, he was untrustworthy. He only studied for two years and then they expelled him. He was not allowed to do the first final state exam and he... he ended up badly. His mum was in a bad way, and so was he. His dad was sentenced to serve twenty years.”

“They took him to Opava as a technician after the trial. He was in the middle of his university studies, he had finished four semesters, so they took him to Opava and he stayed there until the amnesty in 1960. Because his cadre reference was extremely horrible so they could not assign him to a work camp. Because he allegedly testified. I was just waiting for interrogation in a corridor in Pankrác and the warden who was guarding me said: ‘Lady, there is a young brat there, he roundly cursed the regime...‘ and that was my husband. ‘So he will get the rope.‘ Well and it really looked like it, the proposal mentioned capital penalty. We got to know it only the day when the sentences were given and we did not sleep the whole night in the cell. There were many of us there and we prayed for him not to get the capital penalty. Finally he was sentenced to serve nineteen years.”

“First, they arrested my husband, we were still single at that time, I was nineteen years old after all. And Jarda was twenty-two years old. First, they imprisoned him a week before me. And I could see that the cops were still following me. It was interesting, they pretended that I could not see them but I could. And you know, it went on for a week and my nerves were shot. Well and one day in the morning, they knocked on the door because we did not have a ring, it was an old house and there were doorhandles and they came for me and took me and I went with them. A car was waiting downstairs. A young woman was behind the wheel and one of the two man who came for me sat next to her and the other one sat next to me. It looked as if we were going on a trip. I do not know what time it was, maybe eight o´clock, it was quite early. Well and we arrived at Bartolomějská. But first we stopped by the Ministry of Construction, so apparently, he went to report it to the personnel office and we arrived at Bartolomějská. If you want me to, I will tell it to you in details. We came inside and they put black dark glasses on my eyes, I naturally resisted and (they told me) I could not. Then they took me, turned me around several times and I did not know where I was going. And then they pushed me in a room, closed the door behind me, they took off my glasses. They closed the door behind me and a huge German shepherd was sitting opposite to me. And now imagine what should you do? And so I told him: ‘You´re such a nice doggy!‘ It worked on the dog and it did not hurt me. I do not know how long I was there, I was standing opposite to it and it was sitting opposite to me. Then they took me away, put the glasses back on and took me somewhere and I had to took off my clothes there.”

“I remember that we went... that I went ice-skating to an ice rink and Gottwald was speaking at that moment. He gave the speech. It was actually the beginning of the end. It was not good for anyone. They started to imprison people. I do not wish anyone to experience such horrible times. Unfortunately, our family was affected by it. Dad could not have the taxi service. Because they nationalised everything, so dad worked for a car service. And mum was a house wife for some time but then - his salary was really so law that they would not been able to make a living - so she started to work somewhere... She worked in a shop - someone from the shop - a manager had looked for a cleaning lady and I mentioned it to my mum and she started to clean in the shop. I was imprisoned in 1952, they imprisoned me in June and the monetary reform was carried out the following year. And back then the warden had us line up and told us what had happened. Because Zápotocký said in the evening that no monetary reform would be carried out and it was (carried out) in the morning. So people were completely impoverished. So he said that all of us had some money on our (bank) accounts and that each of us could send five hundred crowns. So I sent it home and dad cried because they did not have anything.”

“Nobody expected anything like this because the end of the war was coming. It was a mistake of Americans, the Germans did not do it, we did not expect it and everyone stayed at home. I was writing my homework when it started. And before we got down, the bombing ended. And when you see... dead bodies were lying there. Before they cleaned all of them... Our neighbour´s son with his son were buried, the whole family. They were in Na Moráni, if you know where the street Na Moráni is, so the buildings there were torn down. It was not pleasant and pretty. It looked horrible. We could hear, I mean during the war, the shoots in the church where the parachutes were being shot down. We could hear that even in our building. We could also see the village of Lidice on fire in the distance. We also saw that. Such a fire. So this kind of stuff, you... you remember it. When you become old you do not remember anything, but when you are a child, you remember everything.”