Mgr. Ivan Mánek

“After it was revealed, the whole group was arrested. I think that Franta Zahrádka was arrested in his flat and Karel Pecka was arrested while he was trying to cross the state border. After they had caught us, they knew how to make us speak. If you knew what the interrogations were like at the StB, you would agree with me that it was hardly possible to resist. If they didn’t beat it out of you, they put you on some hallucinogenic drugs. In my case, they battered the sole of my foot with a ruler. If you haven’t experienced this, try it, it’s unbearable. At the interrogation, slaps don’t count as torture, that’s nothing. We were slapped all the time. It started at the very moment you entered the room and after a while you don’t even notice it anymore. The real torture started when you weren’t responding to their questions in the way they liked. With our youngsters, they mostly used beating.”

“It was at the time I got married and had a kid. I was approached by two agents of the StB in a bus. They stopped me and told me they need to talk with me. I told them: ‘why should I talk with you’? They said that I was a scout and that I knew all the scouts in the area. They had been informed about some new groups that were being formed. They wanted me to infiltrate these groups and collect information about scout activities in the region of České Budějovice for them. They wanted me to inform them. ‘Are you kidding me? Do you have an idea what you’re asking from me’? ‘We just want you to monitor them so that they don’t do anything illegal’. ‘You want me to spy on them’? ‘Well, call it what you like. In return, we would tolerate your job and you wouldn’t have to leave it’.”

“I was completely cut off from the rest of the world. The tricky thing about working in the mines was that you had to reach the daily target, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. It took the greatest effort of you to fulfill it and a number of people just weren’t capable of doing it. We were young guys at that time, me and Gusta Křížů, around 19 or 20 years old, we managed to do it. But those who didn’t were punished. They were given only half the usual portion of food and they were sent to the correction. With halved food rations, you were barely able to survive, let alone perform heavy labor in the mines and reach demanding targets. Sometimes we would help those who were not capable of reaching the targets. I would sometimes load 18 carts and give one away. Of course, it wasn’t easy, because sometimes I had trouble loading 17 carts myself, for example in winter, when it was harder to work. We came there in early spring and it was still very cold by then. But we had to work all day long, outdoors, in any weather. We worked in snowstorms or heavy rain. It was very tough there and I think that this was one of the most brutal camps in Czechoslovakia.”

“I demanded an increase of my salary at Motor but I was told that it was out of the question. They told me that I was not entitled to an increase of salary. I disagreed with them and the case got to the director of the company. The director told me I was not entitled. I only found out later why. I found out by looking into my cadre profile after the ‘tender revolution’. In Pardubice, I found the complete records they kept on me. I was NO 151, an enemy of the state. That’s how they called me. The file contains a lot of interesting things. For instance, on the grounds of a directive of the central committee of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia from 1971, I was put on a so-called ‘black list’ that listed people who had opposed the regime in some way. I was put on that list for my activities in the Club of disengaged non-partisans, for my involvement in the Junák and for my disapproval of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw pact.”