“My brother Josef spent four and a half years in a concentration camp during the war. He ran away two times; two times I was hiding him. And when he came back he wanted to escape abroad and he got sentenced to five years for this idea. He escaped from the prison again and I was hiding him again. I was hiding a criminal, that’s why… And of course, I cursed the communists, too. They executed my brother. I still have not come to terms with it, not even now. I still curse them, no matter who they are, and I curse them when I get up, I curse the communists. I have always suffered because of my brother. Every year, whenever I can, I go to the cemetery in Ďáblice because of him.”
“At first he was sentenced to death sentence. Then it was changed to eighteen years and eventually he spent eleven years in prison. He was sentenced in the same trial. Brother Jiří was sentenced to five years because he had been bringing him food to the forest. He was a minor, and he suffered a lot while he was imprisoned in Zámrsk. They caught him when he tried to escape and they bound him with chains and hogtied him and then lay him in the courtyard and all prisoners, the underage prisoners, had to pass by him and beat him. They thought that he was dead and so they threw him to the basement. Girls who were peeling potatoes there noticed his groaning and they went to him and washed away the blood from his body. They gave him hot water to drink and he thus recovered. He suffered a lot, poor boy.”
“In the 1950s I was in the coal mines in Kladno for one year, and then in a brick factory in Toněchody near Chrudim. I was in prison because I had been cursing Gottwald and the government in general. The postwoman and a witness who were not there informed upon me. I was arrested and they wanted to have me declared as fully incompetent. They did not succeed, because they sent me to the psychiatric hospital in Jihlava, and the head doctor there, certain Mr. Kotina, was a certified court expert. When he learnt about it, he remarked: ‘And on top of that, they would like to advise us what to do!´They did not give me any treatment there; I was only getting intravenous nutrition because I had been walking through forests and drinking just rainwater and eating only sorrel and daisies for the two weeks before that. That was my food, and I lost so much weight.”
Anna Musilová was born July 27, 1920 in Bystré u Poličky as Anna Fricová. Later her surname became Čermáková when she married, then she was Šteflová during her trial and her surname eventually changed to Musilová after her second marriage. Her parents - father who was a shoemaker and mother who was a worker - raised eight children. Anna‘s eldest brother Josef Fric had problems with the police during the war and he was sent to a concentration camp for theft. He continued to be involved in criminal activity in the 1950s and he was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for burglary and for theft of two guns. Before he started serving his prison sentence, he had established an anti-state group Anna and he had been hiding in a lodge in the forest near the village Houserovka near Pelhřimov for three months. He eventually decided to flee to West Germany, but he suffered a gunshot injury during the attempt. Josef was sentenced to death for his anti-state activity. Since his whole family was assisting him during his escape, his other brother, his mother and Anna were likewise sentenced to prison terms in various lengths. It was not for the first time that Anna was in prison: she had already experienced imprisonment during the war for singing a song which celebrated T. G. Masaryk. This time she was sentenced to three years. She suffered a psychic collapse when she heard the sentence and she was therefore hospitalized in a psychiatry ward. Her sentence was later commuted to three months, and she has served this prison term. After her release she divorced her husband who had been allegedly informing upon her. Since the family had not been informed when Josef Fric died or where he was buried, Anna was searching for his grave. Later she also began looking for the final resting places of other victims of the communist regime. In 1968 she was actively involved in K 231, an association of former political prisoners, and in the 1970s she was dismissed from her job.
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!
