JUDr. Eliška Wagnerová Ph.D.

"Even though there was a new constitution and even though the Constitutional Court said in its very first ruling that despite all formal continuity with the old law, it was necessary to insist on material discontinuity - that is, value discontinuity - and this thesis could then be worked with when deciding cases before the general courts, only... I did, I don't want to say 'excuse' them, but after all, one has to be fair - those judges didn't know how to handle it. You see, it was all so new procedures, new approaches that they hadn't been trained for. You know, I remember reading somewhere that when the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was adopted in Britain, that all the judges were given two months' training on how to work with it. Because it also demolished the existing doctrine and the existing practice - how the law was worked with in Britain. Well, and here in this country, when it came to the new constitutionalism and how it was reflected in the interpretation of sub-constitutional law, nobody got anything, any training, etc. - of those judges, prosecutors, perhaps even lawyers. So the development was very slow and it was really only because the Constitutional Court had to intervene in many places. Look, if it hadn't been for the Constitutional Court, restitution would not have taken place. The ordinary courts simply interpreted the restitution so narrowly and so formalistically that it would have been a fraction of what was actually restituted in the end."

"Even in that Free Europe, it was to a certain extent divided, that 1948 emigrants were one caste, 1968 emigrants were another caste. And then there were the newer ones who followed them up – those 1968 emigratns - and that was probably due to their older age or I don't know.. You know, that's the way it was, when I left Czechoslovakia, I really had a lot of anger towards communism and I really looked at it with anger, and this was also reflected in the attitudes towards people who were formerly communists who emigrated. And then they found themselves in some kind of limelight again, and I wasn't looking at the fact that they could do something, or what they could do, but rather that I expected them to go through some kind of purgatory. And they didn't. Well, I didn't get on very well with them. In other words, I simply didn't find my way to that group of 1968 emigrants, but rather I found my way to those 1948 emigrants. It just seemed to me that they were actually more authentic in the concept of democracy, or how to say. I don't know. Later, however, I found out that of course dividing people into such castes is completely useless, that of course it varies from person to person, that there are people who are capable of a certain development, and there are people who are not capable of a certain development."

"Once, it was in 1969, we were returning from there [from a concert evening in Kladno], and we were actually walking outside Kladno, past the Kladno cemetery. And it was the time of May, so we couldn't think of anything better than to start singing a song based on a John Brown song, that when Gustav Husák hangs on a branch, there will be peace in the Czech land... yeah, well. After that, when we passed the cemetery, a police car suddenly rushed out of the side street, from the first Kladno street. The policemen jumped out of it and those who were walking in the first rows, because there were really many of us, they grabbed them and took them to the Kladno police station. Well, I went with a boy whose brother was among those detained ones. Well, we went looking for them, to see what was happening to them. We went to the police station and tried to look into the windows, but it didn't work because they arrested us too. They put us there too, but they were no longer physically rough with us like with those who were there from the beginning. They really beat them, and they beat them badly. And, of course, they also had to listen to things like what do you think, that if you are educated, that you will act here like this, in such a way. We will show you something, and so on."

"When they arrested him [Vojslav Bušina, uncle of the witness]. I don't remember the atmosphere in the family. Because I think they were trying to hide it all from me somehow. But only later, much much later, I know that my father told me, for example, that they simply had to keep an eye on my grandmother [Vojslav Bušina's mother], because she, for example, tried to hang herself in the attic. Because for her it was just... she took it upon herself that she actually kind of got him into it by directing him to that political party. And I guess the atmosphere was somehow there, but I repeat again, they were really covering it up in front of me as much as possible, so that I wouldn´t actually recognize anything as a child."