“They came and wanted me to collaborate with them. But my collaboration lasted only four days and then it was over, because when they asked me to bring a photo, I didn’t come there anymore (…) I would never... I wouldn’t be able to go out among people if I did it.” “You mean you signed it for them, then they wanted you to do something and you refused?” “No, at first I was to be assigned some task, we were to meet the following Friday on a bus stop, but I didn’t even come there. Thus they already knew – he is evading us – so they came for me. They told me I would be under surveillance. And I was. Franta Hrubeš was watching me in the mornings and in the afternoons when I was coming home. They told me: ´Do not attempt escape abroad, you will be caught on the spot.´ In the evening of the very same day when they warned me I went with my wife to a Sokol ball in Mšeno, and there I saw them, their nobs, behind the columns of the school building. They were even there, I saw them.”
“What did you think would happen when they asked you to sign it?”
“Well, that I would cheat them, play a trick on them, nothing else. But they warned me. ´Be sure we will not spare your family if you play any tricks on us.´ – ´Well, there’s nothing else to do then.´ I knew this would get me five years – five years, confiscation of property, a penalty, and other consequences. But it was only Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… In five days they came. On Friday I was to meet them, but this didn’t happen. I was supposed to bring a photo there, and to get my first assignment...”
“And where were you detained? In Litoměřice?”
“For eight months. I was held there by the StB for seven months, they placed an inmate in overalls into my cell, he was a nark, trying to get some information from me. When they saw he would get nothing from me, they withdrew him in three days, they took him away, because he didn’t get anything from me. They wanted more, they knew that I knew something. But they would not get it from me, and that’s what I value most. This is my stance, which I will carry with me to the grave. All people should be like this, and not get involved in something, and then betray the others! That’s a no-go for me! I wouldn’t even do it!”
“They – the Sokol members and the members of the National Socialist Party – were the elite of the nation. If someone had said in 1948: ´Let’s go ahead,´ every single one of us would have gone. Even without weapons, we would have obtained them.”
“And this Mrňáková replied that she would take a bit from the rope they would use for my hanging, as a good luck charm. I thought: ´Can this really be a woman? A mother? No.´ And if I hadn’t known her father, I would... I knew that her name was Mrňáková. And then when I returned and met her, I spat in contempt. People didn’t even know, not even those from Roudnice, that it was her up there behind the prison gate.”
Vítězslav Evermod Vaněk was born July 16, 1922 in Roudnice nad Labem in a family of Karel Vaněk, a patriot and a legionnaire from Italy. He learnt a machinist’s trade and in 1941 he was summoned to work in the Reich. He spent most of this time working in the military area of Eicherloch, where the Nazis were building a partly subterranean oil refining plant for the Benzina company. In 1943 together with a group of Bulgarians he managed to escape back to the Protectorate and for some time he had to keep hiding with his relatives in Kokořín. The end of the war met him in Roudnice and he took part in disarming and peaceful displacement of the German population. After the war he was released from conscription to the army on medical grounds, and he studied a high school for tradesmen and metalworkers. At that time, he became popular in his native Podřipsko region; he was the leader of a youth organization of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party in Roudnice, as well as a successful athlete competing in 25 km long-distance running. After 1948 he was forced to quit his involvement in the National Socialist Party, which was taken over by collaborationists, and he withdrew from public life. From 1949 he was working as a clerk for the regional district of Sokol. In 1951 the State Secret Police approached him with an offer of collaboration, which he at first accepted for fear, but dismissed five days later. Moreover, he disclosed the commitment, which he was forced to sign, to other people as well. He was arrested and after eight months of investigation in Litoměřice sentenced to five years of imprisonment, a penalty, and a five-year forfeiture of civil rights for having compromised the state secret. He served his sentence in a coal mine in Mariánské Radčice and in a quarry in Korozluky, where he suffered a serious leg injury with lasting effects. He was released in 1955. In 1968 he was active in founding the club of political prisoners K 231. Since 1975 he has been living in Jablonec nad Nisou.
