Karel Šírek

"During the interrogation, for example, they reminded me many times that I had children and that if they graduated even from primary school they would be happy, that's what they told me. So I was kind of sorry about that. The idea of explaining to them that if they wanted to study they wouldn't be able to... Lucky again, when the older Vitek went to first grade, it was already 1990. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a miracle happened. And I still think of it as a miracle because the last interrogation was somewhere at the end of October, at the very end of October. It was also many hours. It ended with me telling them that I wouldn't talk to them anymore, that I wanted Dr. Kvasnickova to be there, that I refused to answer them anymore. They left and left me sitting there for another two or three hours. And then they shouted at me that it wasn't the last time, that I shouldn't think that and that they would come soon. And then they never came again. That was because of A Few Sentences, because I signed A Few Sentences, and again chance willed it that I was the first one on the page. And the one who was first on the page was read on Free Europe."

“The last time I was arrested was on 31 October ’89; nowadays people say it was all clear [about the upcoming revolution - trans.] by then, but I was interrogated for twelve hours, and I had no sense of clarity at all. So it wasn’t - it was more just a fluke... We didn’t think of what we did as being against the state, we didn’t really fight the system, we couldn’t give tuppence about the system. We wanted the system to give us a break so we could do what we wanted to.”

“When State Security started coming there, they let it be anyway. They’d take me from work, for instance. I would come to work in the morning, and they’d call me into his office, which looked similar. There were two blokes sitting by the side there, and he said: ‘These comrades here,’ he spoke with me informally, ‘they’ve come for you, Karel, they want to ask you something.’ So we sat there for half an hour, the comrades didn’t say anything, then they said they’d take me away. I said we were leaving for Slovakia at ten. They said: ‘We’ll see about that.’ They released me at eight in the evening, so no I didn’t. And when I came to work the next day, he asked me what had happened. I just told him he probably wouldn’t understand it and that it was better that way, and he let it be again.”

“I was there as a witness, but they didn’t even tell me that, they didn’t tell me that till afterwards because if charges were brought against someone, they usually ended up convicted. But they didn’t tell me that, they said that they had a request for custody there, and I didn’t if they did or didn’t, so it was just a game. They told several times they had the request, they even showed it to me, saying it was a custody request and that it was only up to me if they’d sign now or a bit later, that they were searching my house that very minute. They weren’t, but they did search my friend’s house, and they confiscated absolutely everything, and I didn’t see him again until eighteen months later, and in the statement he read all the people who had testified. You didn’t know [if it was true - trans.] while they were holding you there.”