Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

Out of six, was there any who didn’t confess?
For sure Jirka confessed everything that they knew on him. For sure Hajný confessed, he
even got only one year of punishment because he confessed that he had plans to stay abroad.
He was a really smart and intelligent kid. He was also doing track and field events and he was
connected with Václav Mudra. Mudra became the biggest chief of OBZ after 1948 because he
was an athlete and they were doing athletics together in Slavia. So it was possible that Mudra
helped him out a little bit out of the case or out of the whole thing. So for sure Jirka confessed
everything he was doing, what he smuggled, and everything else. Španninger didn’t have to
confess about anything because he was in the whole case by chance. He wasn’t even in Switzerland
with us where we voted whether to stay there or not. Štock was also supposed to go
or fly for the first time in his life for the national team and according to the paper I later found
out, that Štock said even those things that he didn’t have to talk about. So they got him on
everything that they wanted. For sure Vofka Kobranov didn’t confess and neither did I.
Just for interest, how did you vote in Switzerland?
In Switzerland the whole thing finally collapsed when the immigration group didn’t convince
the whole team to stay and play as the Czechoslovakian team-in-exile. The main initiator and
speaker was the captain of the team Vladimír Zábrodský who put the whole thing together.
The other day in the morning he said the team voted eight players for returning and six were
for immigration. So the decision was resting on him, how he would decide. If he would decide
to stay I am sure the other eight players would have stayed as well. Maybe some of them would
have returned, because at that time it was really hard. For a person who wasn’t even twentyone
years old yet, parents had to give security. That meant if we stayed abroad our parents
would be arrested and the whole family would be liquidated. The other ones who were older,
like Konopásek, Roziňák, Trousílek, and the others, lived either alone and they had families
and they were just older then us twenty year old kids.
Were you for returning or for exile?
I was for returning because I didn’t want to get my parents into such trouble.
When you moved from „domeček“ to Pankrác, what did they sentence you for?
When we got to Pankrác I was in a cell with two other prisoners who were also waiting for
their trial. That wasn’t a solitary cell. There were no more beatings, no more fear that they
would come up with something. The worst for me was the interrogation when they wanted to
beat out a confession that I was giving messages to a Mr. Bow. He was the boss of the American
Embassy here in Prague who was giving out the entrance visas to Germany to all four zones
whether it was the American, British, French, or Russian zone. That was the man Mr. Modrý
introduced me to. He was coming to hockey games and he played golf, his wife played golf,
and I really started a friendship with them. They used this as a pretense that this Mr. Bow was
to inform me and I was giving him other messages or info as to what was happening in the
army. Yet, in my army nothing was happening. We played hockey. When I was telling them
this, they didn’t want to believe it and they still insisted on a confession about what messages
I was giving him. He was supposed to be the main initiator, a person who was persuading me,
to persuade the whole team to immigrate, which wasn’t true at all. I later found out that in
twenty-four hours he was deported out of the country because he was accused of espionage.
So when we came to Pankrác it was already a little different there. For me it was terrible
what I was learning there. Other prisoners were giving me advice on how things go there,
Czechoslovak Political Prisoners 101