Václav Maňák

“I worked at an aircraft factory and I had built model [planes] since my childhood, and my sister, she lived in Jičín in Czech Paradise, my brother-in-law was a pilot, so I used to spend holidays at the airport, it was my life. So of course I wanted to fly ultralights too. It was necessary to get permission from the local National Committee, and of course the party had to express an opinion. I didn’t have a chance. Not ever, not anywhere.”

“And there were more of those agents. Then came another. We called him Franta from Vienna, because he sent greetings from Vienna to convince us two or three times. But back then an agent from the West, who smoked Camel cigarettes and sent greetings from Vienna, well, we knew who that might be. So he didn’t respond at all, and he never trusted anyone any more, and he didn’t want anything. When he was in hiding for five and a half years, they said it was amnestied and that if he’d volunteer, he wouldn’t be punished.”

“I was returning from work and they were just ruining the farmers here. The worst thing was that there weren’t big farmers here, most of the people here had ten or twelve hectares, and these two were just the same. And of course it was impossible to miss, how they behaved there. There was one dunce running around, whip in hand, and he was driving the people away, of course they were gathering there and they were all pretty fired up. And the lady, when they robbed them of everything, she said, ‘Okay, but how will we stay alive, we’ve got children.’ ‘Thousands of kulaks died in Russia. If one family snuffs it here, that’s no biggie.’”

“So we set off, in the evening. We sang: ‘Do not hide, Czech people, do not hide in the attic. Always be ready to shed your shackles.’ Do you know the song? ‘The Czech nation rises from the grave, the Czech lion awakes. For freedom, for our rights, we’ll gladly spill our blood.’ And the third verse was: ‘Daddy dear, O Masaryk, sleep quietly in your grave. We all swear to stay faithful to you.’ So we were singing this all through the village, but it was dark everywhere, no lights at all. Everyone was scared, simply.”