Petr Tomíšek

"And everywhere they just knew I was the brother of a guard, which was quite touching, in quotes, when they asked me what I wanted to do. And I said, well then, given that I'd done Geophysics and I was out and about, I thought an agricultural commando might suit me. I based that on the fact that in Oráčov, for example, there was work on hop farms. I had no idea what they did here in the agricultural commando. However, when they said amongst themselves that I was Ivan's brother, they decided that I would go to the track-undercutting commando. And I wasn't physically up to that at all." "What was next?" "I didn't meet the standard, I got tendonitis in my wrist, so then they transferred me to an easier job or a lighter job on a construction site, where I could already hold a pick or shovel with the sore hand on my thigh and work a little bit."

“They accused me of giving out at least six marijuana-laced cigarettes to at least three people. That works out to two cigarettes per person. And according to their arguments, the THC toxicity [of marijuana grown in Czechoslovakia] was 18 percent, compared to Cannabis Ghana and Cannabis Indica. So I’d say that from today’s perspective, it was complete nonsense, but most importantly, there was no evidence for it. I was given the choice between this paragraph, or subversion of the republic or incitement, and this was the lightest charge. It was a bad choice, but I simply told myself I could endure those two years. And in the end, I got nine months, but during that pretrial detention and the court spectacle, the State Security agents even offered me a charge of incitement to terrorism—which carries a sentence of twelve to fourteen years—for distributing the magazine Vokno, which contained Miroslav Skalický’s short story Cihla [The Brick – transl. ]. And to put it simply, it said that if each of us took a brick and whacked a cop in the head, there’d be peace. But that was, of course, an exaggeration. Still, I knew they could easily take it to the extreme, and fortunately, nothing like that happened.”

"[My brother] and I met in the hallway when they led me to the interrogation x times. I wrote my mom letters why the idiot wouldn't bring me at least vitamins - oranges, lemons. He tried to isolate himself completely because he was afraid he would be fired. Then his wife, my sister-in-law, told me that he had not been promoted for two years because of me. I was quite happy about it, mischievously. But it happened to me, for example, that I was in custody in a cell with two others, and they went to court every day. One was in custody for five years and the other for three years - the regime was really great at the time. So, I was left alone in the cell, which is not allowed, because you could hang yourself. So, they always moved me somewhere else. But when one of those drinkers served, he left me there because he believed me, and on the contrary he came and said, 'Don't you want to take a bath, take a shower? If you're Ivan's brother. "There were people who took it a little differently."

"People were taking terrible drugs in Prague at that time. For example, dissolved Algena filtered through cotton wool, into a vein. I've never done this. Never any drugs. Nevertheless, I have a verdict that I am a polymorphic drug addict. Because the forensic experts, Mr. and Mrs. Slavík, were coming to see me in custody at Ruzyně and said, 'So, are you taking morphine?' And I say, 'I'm not taking anything.' 'Don't say you're not taking morphine!' I say, 'Fuck you, why are you trying this on me here? I've never done it, I've never taken any pills, leave me alone.' - 'So, you want to go to Bohnice to a closed pavilion? For a month, for two? I was quite scared of that because I heard about it. It was actually for convicts, and it wasn't pleasant. So, I started talking to them politely, but I definitely never told them that I did something I didn't do. That's bullshit."

"They came to work for me, and they gave me a choice of several crimes. I could choose to subvert the republic, an incitement to riot or spread drugs and poisons. A major came by, whose name was Řepka, I don't know his first name, and he said, 'Look, you can do whatever you want, we won't let you out of here. Here you can choose according to the extent of the penalty.´ I'm not kidding. They just had no proof. There was a house search, they came with a schnauzer and they had a sample of a Marijuana. To a neighbor who was at home, I said, 'Kateřina, take a good look at where they put it, because I have nothing here. And if anything is found, it's theirs. Look, they're giving a sample over there, so the dog knows what to look for.' My mom came from work unexpectedly. She was devastated because of what was happening there. So, I asked if I could calm her down. They said yes, so I sat down next to her and whispered to her to go to Žleby to my grandfather's and grandmother's house and destroy the typewriter and all the papers she could find there. I managed to tell her that, and then I learned from her when I got out of the prison, that she had the machine scrapped, which was quite consistent - it didn't occur to me, I thought she would just take it away somewhere."