Ilja Květoň

"So for a year there were various investigations. I remember that. I am going home, there's this Volha car in front of my house on Hradešínská Street, and I knew they had come for me. I´m walking into that street. They probably knew what I looked like. They must have been watching me for some time before that. They get out of the car and say, 'Hello. Mr. Květoň?' I say, 'Yeah, yeah. Mr. Květoň.' 'You're coming with us.' 'Sure, I'll just drop my bag off at home and come over.' They were surprised. I was very calm at the time. I wasn't at all, somehow I didn't... I don't know, I was just ready for it. There were interrogations going on. I have to say, I think one of my State Security men was really decent. I met him later, he was in a country band. So they were playing in this Fučík Culture Park, as I was talking about. So we talked. And I was already in dissent, and he told me that he had left State Security. So he interrogated me. Of course, the classic: there was one bad guy and one good guy. You try to stick to the truth, to remember, but you don't want to say the basic things. I let slip something once. He looks at me like this, the State Security man - his name was Hora - I don't know if that was his code name or his real name - he looks at me and says: 'Well, we'd better not write that down. Better not, then.‘ I don't know if we were likeable or if he liked me. They were watching me before. That's the worst part. When I was talking about the friend who signed them up, he was coming in and telling them information about me. And they knew everything about me. That's when you go to State Security and they say, 'What about the girls? What about that one? What about tennis? Are you still skiing over there? Do you still have those paintings at home?' Then you feel that they live with you, that they know everything about you. And that's what's dangerous about it. He didn't say anything bad about me - like he's doing some activity over there and handing out flyers and stuff. He said just normal, everyday things. But when you're sitting there in front of them and they start telling you about how they know everything about you - they don't know everything about you, of course, but they start like that, you suddenly get defensive. What to say, what not to say? What can I say that I can't say?"

"At the time, a guy who worked on the border came through some people. He supplied some sort of device to open the iron ones... there were passages on the border. But you had to sign in and there was a special key to open it. Well, that's what he gave. So we copied it all, or my friend did. I assisted him in that, I helped him in that. Then we went to some... I think it was June too, maybe it was at that time, I know it was very hot... so we went to Železná Ruda. That was, I think, Friday. Somehow we wanted to cross over, and somehow it didn't quite work out, there was something ... and so we came back, we were going to go the next day. And the next day we got there. I basically had the job of driving them there and the car, because it was with his car, and then returning the car to his wife. So we drove there and he and one other successfully crossed the border and nobody knew anything. Wait, that was, I think, Sunday, actually. It was a nice, quiet Sunday. They crossed peacefully, and then they wrote in the German newspapers that two people had crossed. And of course, they were furious, here at the border. They could have gone crazy because they didn't know which way, who, where crossed'. Then, of course, they found it because there were these plowed fields, so they could see the tracks, so they could see which way they crossed. Well, a year later they came at us after that."