“Our cell leader was a guy named Tibor from Žilina. He was twenty-seven years old at the time. He was related to Hlinka and had been a member of the Hlinka Youth. They locked him up, and he got twenty-five years for it. And he was supposed to get married. His fiancée came after the trial and said, ‘Tibor, in twenty-five years we’ll be a little over fifty—it’s worth living for; I’ll be waiting for you…’ When I arrived, Tibor had already been there for seven years, and he used to say, ‘I have something to live for. And I have someone to look forward to…” Those were meaningful gestures. She would then write to him—pretending to be his sister—and his mother would send it in envelopes. The communist regime tried to break people down psychologically as well. For example, they tried to get wives to file for divorce. They put them to hard labor—carrying crates weighing fifty kilograms or more—simply because their husbands were imprisoned. And if she filed for divorce (even if only formally), she was immediately barred from having any contact with the prisoner. Neither the children nor the wives were allowed to write to him. These people would then sit by the window for hours, staring into the distance, often in tears or angry, and so on. They had no idea what was happening at home. That’s how they tried to break them down. Tibor was in his thirties at the time—a man of true character and courage.”
“I think we need to live life as it comes and not delude ourselves into thinking it should be any different. Everything can be experienced. Everything can be of benefit or harm to us. It depends on how we live it out. It is ideal to draw on the love found in Christianity, to know how to live with love, and to forgive out of love.”
“Seven tiny steps forward, seven back. An hour, two, ten. From six in the morning until ten at night. One day, two, three. One week, two weeks, three weeks. One month, two months, three, four... And you’re worn out, like… Then you just long to go in for questioning and see a living person. It takes a psychological toll, and they counted on that. Four months… If a person wasn’t used to finding solace in prayer, it would have been a shock. (...) Guys who’d been in solitary for a month, for example, would pound on the door and scream, ‘Let me out, let me out!’ They’d take him in for questioning, and there he’d spill everything. So it happened to me several times that [the interrogator] asked me sarcastically: ‘So, how are is solitary confinement?’ – ‘So-so, I take it as it comes.’”
“He told me, ‘Look, you’re refusing to confess. And yet: so-and-so is sick (maybe Pater Jurečka really was sick)—and he needs this trial already, but you’re delaying it.’ Things like that—we’ll arrest your parents, we’ll kick your sister out of school (she was teaching at the time). That kind of psychological pressure made you think—well...! But after ten or more hours of interrogation, you were so exhausted that you just didn’t care about some things anymore.”
“What was the situation with the surveillance?” – “At first, nothing. But around 1953, when they found out about the secret contact with Želiv (which they considered espionage), they arrested our superiors [who, until then, had officially been ‘merely in internment’], and they were sentenced to fifteen to twenty years.... It turned out that Father Filipec had organized the contact; they started looking for him, and from then on we began to be (also) under surveillance.”
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Miloslav Frank was born on June 27, 1924, in Bánovce nad Bebravou, Slovakia. When he was four years old, his family moved to Svinov near Ostrava, and Miloslav became a regular visitor to the Salesian oratory in Ostrava. After completing his apprenticeship as an auto mechanic, he began his studies at the Salesian religious schools in 1944. He spent the night of April 13–14, 1950—when monasteries were raided and shut down as part of the so-called “Operation K”—at the study house in Přestavlky. After graduating from high school, he refused to enroll in the Communist-controlled seminary in Litoměřice. He became a member of an underground religious community, maintained contact with imprisoned religious superiors, helped distribute the Salesian magazine Cor unum, and organized unauthorized religious gatherings. In 1957, he was sentenced to two years in prison for these activities, which he served in prisons in Ilava and Valdice. In the 1960s, Miloslav Frank prepared for his ordination by studying theology; he was secretly ordained by Cardinal Trochta in 1968. After making his priesthood public, he served as pastor of the parishes in Bílina and Verneřice in the Děčín region, and after his retirement, he became the right-hand man of the Salesian provincial minister, Ladislav Vik. After the Velvet Revolution, he became fully involved in the renewal of the Salesian Congregation. Miloslav Frank died on October 30, 2012, in Prague.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
