Karel Janovický

“Yes, the situation was very tense because at that time – during Dubček’s Prague Spring, in the course of those six months – Czechs and Slovaks suddenly started arriving here who had been looking forward to it for a long time. So they would often come directly to our home, they wanted to meet with us, talk with us about the events in Czechoslovakia, report what was going on in the country. Among them were a lot of spies because – as we later learned – the intelligence service had huge gaps in its knowledge about the BBC and in this way, they were able to get a clearer picture about it, by adding many of the missing pieces to the puzzle. It was with the help of this sudden influx of people that they were able to get a lot of new information. It turned out to be that way later on, when people, for example women, were allowed to visit their relatives in Czechoslovakia in exchange for payments. When Husák came to power, as an old attorney, he introduced the option to pay and visit Czechoslovakia twice and then go back again. Most often, you could say almost routinely, pople were kept under the surveillance of the secret police and were also invited for interviews. And there it turned out what they knew about the BBC in order to supplement their information.”

“The important lesson for us to take away here was that after all our experiences from the refugee camps you had to be cautious when dealing with your compatriots. Because there were so many spies among them and they hurt so many people that we would simply shun people from Czechoslovakia. Of course we had some Czechoslovak friends. But one had to be careful.”