Tomáš Mikeska

"I went to all the demonstrations, but I didn't go to the demonstration at Albertov because I said, 'That's a permitted demonstration, I can't go there. It's organized by the Youth Union, I can't go there.‘ However, we were in Prague and we found out that something was happening at the National Theatre. My father-in-law and mother-in-law were there. So we went to the National Theatre and we saw the crowd being pushed by the cops. So we went to see what was going on. Suddenly the crowd was pushed far away. We ran into the church next to the New Stage. And all of a sudden the crowd went and we were in this church. We were about to come out, and suddenly the cops pushed into the crowd again. So we were walking out. Anyway, my mother-in-law ran in and a cop came at her with a baton. The parish priest or somebody got out and said, 'You can't go in here!' The policeman stopped and let us go. We then ran away and ran along the embankment to the Rudolfinum where the bus was standing. But on the way I saw that there were military transports going there and they had nets on top. I wondered if they were going to catch people in the nets or what they were going to do. That was me with my wife, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law and the little boy. Of course, that's when we ran away when we saw that such horror was going on. So I immediately turned on Free Europe and I know I called all my friends to tell them what was happening here in Prague... some horror."

"Then I remember a lot about Leopoldov. We arrived in Leopoldov at six o'clock in the morning, we drove all night. I remember sleeping in Valašské Meziříčí on a table somewhere in the waiting room. We arrived in Leopoldov early, because we had to be there at eight o'clock. We actually arrived there in front of the prison. It was a kind of stone prison, with dogs guarding it upstairs. I was interested in that. But we waited there until four or five o'clock in the afternoon. They deliberately made us wait there hungry and thirsty. Then we went to my father's place and we talked for about a quarter of an hour. It looked like we came into a room. There was a counter, and behind the counter was a net up to the ceiling. And behind the net were ten guys, and one of them was my father. And we talked to him through the net, about a foot away from him, for about a quarter of an hour. A quarter of an hour later, we were chased out again. I remember that exactly, I was maybe four years old. Because when my father was locked up in Leopoldov, I remember that. Then I remember well Valdice, the so-called kartouzy. You used to go in towards the baroque church. There were planted flower beds. I have such childhood memories of that prison. There were beautiful flowers, little hearts. Today we have those hearts at our cottage, it's my memory of Valdice, where I used to visit my father in the prison. Then Daddy was in the women's prison in Pardubice for four years. There were about two hundred women prisoners there and thirty men who were employed to maintain the prison. It sounds funny that they were in the maintenance of a women's prison. But they were breaking down the buildings there. It was terribly dangerous, because they built a prison there, they made six- or seven-story buildings. And the houses were falling down and cracking. So the thirty prisoners were knocking down the upper floors and building roofs. He was there for four years. There, of course, the punishment, according to his later account, was much milder. The worst was in Leopoldov, when they were starving and cold. That was the worst period. He was in Leopoldov for almost two years and he lost weight there. He had originally, when they locked him up, he was almost a hundred kilometres, and then he lost forty kilos."