Luděk Svoboda

„One morning a bell rang and I was just making my son a cocoa drink after school, and now there were some men dressed in jeans with a worn out Skoda car saying: Mr. Svoboda, we need to ask you something. So I said ok, come in please. – No, no, we´d take you to our office. (...) they asked us to report who was coming in. So I replied to them not to be crossed, as they didn’t know my leader, but listening to someone around the corner, she´d pull my hear and take me to the sales department. And second, I had no clue who´s who. I didn’t know anyone´s names. So they said, they could just pick up the phone and I´d get fired. So it ended without any deal, no cooperation, and I could not tell anyone. I was afraid and slept bad (...) For I didn’t know what´s ahead for me. At the time I could have been arrested for fifteen years of nothing at all. The funny thing was that I was at my brother´s at the Śumava mountains skiing and now I was visiting some guy who was so sympathetic, funny and all... And he was the one interrogating me. He even had skies from the holidays there. So I said: Actually we know each other, we went skiing together... Well, he was not chuffed at all...“

„When we bought books, we had to leave them on a shelf, the new ideological supervision came and said: You can do this and that... but that kind of supervision was some doctor Špicová and she told me: ‚Luděk, don’t be silly, you cannot do that...‘ And that was all. We had that infamous box, where we threw such stuff and when some of those people we knew about came there, we let them have a go and search it. Then some idiot, who heard of it, came and said: So you got a box of banned books. And five metres from him stood a secret policeman. And we said: You must be mad, there is no such thing here. And he said: Miss Přívorů informed me. Well that was really worse...“