Danuše Stehlíková

"I was offered that a few times. ’You can do office work. You have the education. All you have to do is to sign here saying you're taking it back. What would happen to you?' I said, 'Nothing would happen. But I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it!" That's how we were haggling like in the market."

"It's four or five people breaking into your flat, they have one civilian with them that they just picked up somewhere to give it that right feel. That's what I saw in him, that he was scared. And they say, 'Here's a search warrant.' They started immediately! They'll unmake your beds, they'll shake out every book. I used to have a lot of glass, fragile dishes, I liked it. And I always told them, "Gentlemen, if I hear a clink, you´ll see! ´ Nothing clinked. But they turned everything upside down. They put your laundry out, they put your books out. We had a lot of them. Over there, the wall was full of books. I was like, if they will look through these... They took each one, shook it out to see if there was anything in it, and they puti t back. And they systematically went row by row."

"This Ilja Prachař, the actor, suddenly I answered the phone and heard, 'This is Ilja Prachař, I would like to visit you.´ And I thought, 'Jesus Christ!´ So he made an appointment, came in and said, 'Mrs Stehlíková, we found out about you, that you're in trouble. A couple of my friends and I are going to put money together every month and give you eight hundred crowns.' It would be ridiculous now, but it was good at the time. For maybe a year, this Prachař would always bring me eight hundred crowns, we had a chat and he left."