Josef Sorban

“My dad was released from prison in 1962. I’d like to note that when Mum and I lived in Prague, we received permission to visit him twice. I hadn’t the slightest clue what kind of prisons they had in Czechoslovakia, or that the prison, the facility where he was kept was one of the worst political facilities in Czechoslovakia. I remember we had to go there by train, by bus, and then another two kilometres on foot in the winter, in January, when it was -12 degrees [Celsius - trans.], and they even let us wait outside. It was in Mírov near Mohelnice. That was the first time, and the second time it was a year before his release, in Leopoldov in Slovakia. Neither prison was exactly the best, and I could see that my dad was the worse for it.”

“Of course, I had a bad ‘cadre profile’, as it was called, because of my parents - even though I was a Pioneer, and I was even active in various Pioneer events. It didn’t help me much, although I had good results at school, which I can still prove, they barred me from going to grammar school - secondary comprehensive education school at the time, you weren’t allowed to call it grammar school. I could go to a vocational centre, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to attend grammar school because my ambition was to study at a university, which I was barred from doing because of my cadre profile, because my parents had a negative opinion of the regime. But then we moved to Bratislava, my step-father, who was a bit better off - and although not a Party member - had a great position at one company in Bratislava. So it was possible to work things out through him, and I did actually go to grammar school in the end.”