Jana Kašparová

"It was after Jan Litomiský signed Charter 77 and he was, I think, vice-chairman of VONS that the State Security had constant surveillance over him. I used to experience it in such a way that on Sundays when I used to go by car from Horní Dubénky to Opatov to hold services, there was already a sixty-three waiting for me in front of the village where Jan Litomiský lived, in front of Vyskytná, who joined in and followed me to that village through Vyskytná to Opatov, where my parish and church were. There the services were held and they were watching me and waiting for the services to finish. Apparently, they were checking with this Jan Litomiski, who used to have various visitors and also went to that service, to see if I would be any more with them. I didn't really understand what was going on, but for several months that checking was going on. It even happened once that they stopped me and searched the car I was carrying and read the sermon I had. But then I have to say that myself and those members of the congregation in Opatov and the curator, we accepted it more as a kind of play thing. And that we tried to sort of bypass the State Security or pretend like it wasn't there, because we suspected that to start being afraid and making concessions would lead to some kind of complete paralysis."

"The leaflets got to Prague, they were distributed through various channels. So we got them through this Jan Tesar and we sent them out. One evening, in my cousin's borrowed apartment, we brought hundreds of envelopes and addresses according to the phone books and also according to what I remembered of the different addresses from that particular Miroslav. So we put them in envelopes, put them in various mailboxes around the city, and Jan Tesar and I agreed that on the third day after the mailing we would meet in Wenceslas Square and he would let us know if everything was all right or if there was a problem. We were supposed to meet in front of the Světozor cinema, and if there was a problem, he would go to the other side and we would go through, and if everything was OK, we would just meet. Well, it turned out that he left and disappeared, which is how we knew there was a problem. We learned that other participants in this leafleting event had been arrested. It was Professor Hejdánek, the pastor of the Vršovice congregation Jaromír Dus and his curator. The action was somehow compromised and the police found a supply of the leaflets in their home and arrested them. And that's when I felt a little bit of fear, or a kind of threat, the proximity of arrest and imprisonment. But they managed to cover it up. I was discussing this with Jaromir Dus not long ago. How is it possible that they got away with it and were sentenced even to a few months and he got years. I don't know how they didn't find out about us, but I guess it really didn't get out. The election turned out the way it did, but that was sort of the first of my political experiences of how one can engage in relativizing those things, at least a little bit, or making one's position known. What was interesting was that when I came to Miroslav for the weekend afterwards, a lot of people told me about how they were told not to vote. And it's interesting, my parents got it, I sent it to them too, but I think it wasn't just for that reason that they didn't go to the polls. And my dad called me on the phone afterwards and said that the commission was so relentless that they even came to him with the ballot box in the field where he was plowing and begged him to stop the tractor and throw the ballot in. Because it was a terrible shame for that particular commission that somebody didn't vote. And he never voted again, and neither did my mother, and I wasn't able to go to any more elections either."

"As I was saying, when we went to East Germany, to East Berlin, the reality of how the West versus the East works became a bit stale, you could say. Or you were already counting on it and somehow you didn't fully realize the consequences. But now, when we were able to go up to the wall, and even climb up the scaffolding to see where the East was - and there were armoured men standing guard from the East, I became tangibly aware of the difference and the strength of the communist power, which is manifested even in such brutal interventions. There were memorials on the wall to people who tried to cross - and failed and died there. The trip to the wall was on Tuesday, I think, before we knew about the occupation. After that, I didn't have much thought of enjoying the West, although it made a big impression on me at the time, because of course, even externally, life there was much better than in those socialist countries and than in the eastern part. There was this tangible difference that East Germany was really poor and the West, and especially Berlin, was a kind of showcase."