Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

quite a big joiner’s workshop and lived in a busy street. Hundreds of people used to walk past
our house on their way to work. It was in February 1948 when my mom opened the window at
10 am and was very surprised to see many people walking home from work. I stayed at work
at that time. I worked in a building company and my office was on the ground floor. There
were about 25 employees in the company and many of them would stand on their tiptoes by
the window to see whether I was sitting at my table. I think one of them wagged his finger at
me. My boss helped me to stay there and keep on working, but unfortunately it was my sister
who was dismissed from work. She used to work in a tent and canvas factory. That sacking
prompted her to apply for legal emigration from Czechoslovakia.
She worked as an organist in a parish church in Novosedlice. The head of the parish was
Dr. Johan Thies, an Austrian who was not driven out but a man who wanted to move to
Austria. Thanks to him my sister had contacts for all the offices in Prague and she did the
same thing as him. She applied for emigration, she did not accept the Czechoslovak citizenship
which was recently given to people during Communism. She was given permission to emigrate
in autumn 1950. The permission was valid until the end of March 1951. She moved to Austria,
to the Russian zone, where she got help from our father’s business partner. He lent her an identification
card of another woman who looked a bit like my sister. Using that ID card she got to
the western zone and later to Western Germany where she stayed.
Did you have any problems due to your sister’s emigration?
The problems started after I was arrested. The secret police would threaten me during the
questioning by saying, “Your sister is in Austria in the Russian zone and we will bring her here.”
At that time I did not know if she managed to escape from there or not. I was very scared
because they were able to arrest anyone they wanted, put him in a car and drive him back to
Czechoslovakia. It would not have been the first or the last case, and it was very easy for them
to arrest people in the Russian zone.
As you have already mentioned being arrested and questioned, I would like to ask, why did
they arrest you? What subversive activities did you do?
I longed for freedom, you know. I was a child from the border area and I remember that, during
skiing in the Krušné Mountains we could easily cross the borders. The custom officer only
asked, “How long will you stay there kids, where will you go, come back afterwards.” I was
used to a life full of freedom in the borders. When I saw all those changes after the war, no
tourism, no opportunities, no culture, no books, magazines, or newspapers I hated it. It was all
very chauvinistic and I did not like it. I longed for living in a different political system and that
is why I was brave enough to do something against that. We had contacts for the people on the
border crossings, there was one man who took people from Eastern Germany, from Zinwald
(Cínovec). He did that for quite a lot of money, because he also had to make his living. I used
to send him some people who had to escape from the country, for example they had to run
away from the threat of being arrested. So suddenly my family and I became part of the group
who helped people cross the borders. I do not know if one of those people we helped was
a police informer, but I think we must have been under observation because soon we realised
something had started happening around us.
So you were arrested for illegally taking people across the borders?
Apart from helping people cross the borders, we also printed leaflets. There were no computers
in those days so we wrote the leaflets on good quality typewriters where we could make
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