Hana Moravcová

“They headed out towards Železná Ruda. Before that he had told him he could take one large piece of luggage and warm clothes because there would be snow there. So they set out on the First. They drove to about as far as Lučina, the taxi took them there. Then this Jarda told him he would have to walk, that it would be about two or three kilometres. That he wouldn’t accompany him any further. That he’d cross a bridge and then come up against a German patrol. It was all in the dark, he crossed it [the bridge] and really was stopped by a German patrol in German uniforms with German sub-machine guns. But there was a sign there saying ‘Deutsche Grenzpolizei’. Except the ‘Grencpolizei’ was spelled with a Czech ‘c’. But the Germans spell it ‘Grenz’. So there was a grammatical error there. Well, and then they started interrogating him.”

“In that year when there was the European or world championship, we received ‘calorie allowance’. Depending on your performance it was from about 150 to 300 crowns a month. It was to supplement your diet. But for us to get something for a medal, that was out of the question. I had to pay someone to do my work for me, even though the company lost nothing because it was remunerated for the days when I didn’t work by the state committee. [Q: And you also said your wages were half the normal amount because of your dad.] Certainly. I moved on from payroll accounting to company inspection, and I worked in a warehouse where my colleagues had wages two levels higher than me for exactly the same work. [Q: And couldn’t it have also been because you lacked the education?] Of course it could. They didn’t even acknowledge my state exams from typewriting and shorthand because it wasn’t from a state school but a private one.”

“The way it was set up – it was like the screenplay of some film. All he told me was that he felt as though he had never actually crossed the border. That they had set the whole thing up. Back when he still had a ball-bearing workshop and it wasn’t completely ruined yet, they visited him. This one man named Klér came there. He had acquainted himself with my father somehow. He told me he had a friend called Jarda who could guide him across the borders. That if he was interested, he should say, and he’d organise it. Some time later my father decided he would, and they agreed there’d be a taxi waiting for him somewhere in a street in Pilsen at about five p.m. on 1 March 1951, and that they’d go.”

“[Q: Did you forgive them?] The Communists or the regime? No. I won’t forgive them. When I think of my Dad, I won’t. They also ruined us in a way. We managed to adapt somehow to live a decent life. But they completely ruined our dad’s life. He was such a – I apologise for using the word – but he was a genius who was an amazing contribution to the country. And he wasn’t the only one, there were many such people who were talented, clever, and beneficial. But all they saw was that they had a big factory or that they were better off, but the benefit this brought to the country or to the people who had employment, or for research, or for progress...”

“It’s a terrible thing when everything is fine, you have your life and your friends, and suddenly some housekeeping hag comes along, all flared up and full of Communist ideals and says you’re bourgeois swine and should be hanged, good riddance. Suddenly you’re practically a criminal and you don’t know why. And that puts an end to that period of beautiful, carefree youth. My only good luck was that I had my sport. But the sport was cut short too, because in 1951 the Communists dissolved Sokol and turned it into VSOs [Voluntary Sports Organisations - trans.]. That was the Škoda Works, Slavoj, and Dynamo. And then we were banned from training at the Doubravka Sokol Hall, where I had grown up and where our coach was, who was also a member of the men’s national team. We weren’t allowed inside at all. Only Škoda workers were.”

“They questioned him and offered that he could collaborate with the American secret service. That they’d like to have a talk with him. My father said he was an independent and that he didn’t want to cooperate with any secret service. He told them that he already had a job waiting for him and that he would leave Germany straight for India. They then pretended to phone somewhere and told him that if he wasn’t interested in collaborating, they weren’t interested in him. They started going through his things – the book described it as ‘with feigned greed’. They robbed my father of everything. Everything he had with him. Some money, a camera, gold, his watch. A week later the stetsecs were pawning it off in Pilsen. They had a request for a camera and watch of unknown origin. They couldn’t say where they had gotten them from because that would have proved that my father had never crossed the border. He had no idea where he was. They wrote a report of the interrogation in German, which is full of grammatical mistakes. The German who interrogated him spoke perfect German because he had grown up with his parents somewhere in Germany and spoke well. But his grammar was another matter.”