I am very proud to be a political prisoner and, as such, to be with you tonight, for this is a very special occasion. A reception for political prisoners of Czechoslovakia is very unusual in itself. For the first time ever, such an event is being held in the confines of the Czechoslovakian Embassy here in Washington to honor those who survived the prisons of the Communist era.

I would like to mention the support of the families of the prisoners who had in their constant prayers their loved ones. I am sure that many of them are among us tonight. These are the memories which have brought us together. I cannot forget one very important fact which is a very sad part of our homeland's history. Czechoslovakia between the two world wars was a model of democracy and was called an island of peace. But the Soviet occupation ended these happy years, and from 1945 to 1948 our homeland was on the way to recovery.

On the surface, everything seemed to be well, but inside the country a very ugly and sinister crime was being committed. The Communist Party was getting ready to seize power, and its efforts culminated in the coup d'etat of February 1948. They established themselves as exclusive rulers of the country. Democracy and freedom were abandoned for a Soviet-style totalitarian state. Our beloved land became a Soviet satellite and an outpost of Soviet imperialism.

What should I say for the many political prisoners who suffered, struggled, and even died in the Communist prisons of Czechoslovakia? They were honest men and women whose only crime was the love of their country and the freedom it possessed. They were "class enemies." For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, class enemies were owners of the big factories and farms, but gradually the term came to include anyone who disagreed with the Communists and who, in one way or another, was considered a threat. They were removed from society and placed in prison for many years. We had shortages of many things during this time, but the Communists were never short of prisons.

Everybody knows roughly how big Czechoslovakia is, yet in this land we had over a hundred concentration camps. The exact number of how many prisoners were in them will never be known, but a conservative estimate is around 200,000. The brutality of the Czechoslovakian Secret Police was equal to that of the Gestapo. Hundreds of prisoners were executed. There are no figures on those who were tortured to death or who died while being interrogated.

During the ten years I was a political prisoner, I went through 14 camps. Life in the camps was unimaginable but it cannot compare to the hard life that men had to face in the mines and in the high-security prison - Pevnosti. Many prisoners died while working, many were murdered by the guards, and many were killed while trying to escape. They were always naked and hungry.

For you to have a thorough understanding of what it meant to be a political prisoner, it would be best if I explained to you my own circumstances. My family, like many others, was designated as a class enemy. This in itself made life very hard for us. After my father's arrest, my mother and I gave food and clothing to a friend of a friend who had escaped from Czechoslovakia and subsequently returned. The secret police claimed that he had come back to cause trouble. For the fact that he slept in our house for two nights, my mother was sentenced to twelve years in prison. I received a ten-year sentence, which I served to the last day. I can share my memories with you up until a certain point, but not all of them because some of them are nightmares. I hate to be melodramatic or sorrowful, but I will try to express the experiences I went through in a meaningful way.

I was 20 years old and a university student when, one night in June, our house was surrounded by plainclothes police. They were shining spotlights on the door and windows. I saw them take away my brother, who lived with his very young, pregnant wife. It was the last time they saw each other because my brother did not survive. They took my mother and me to the nearest police station and tried to obtain whatever information they could about the man who had stayed at our house. I did not know anything about him, but after 20 hours of interrogation I was willing to confess to anything just to be left alone. Afterwards, we were transported to Prague in a special van that was divided into very narrow cages. My nose was pressed against the wall, and my knees against the door. There were people making noises in the other cages but I could not see them because when they let me out in Prague I was blindfolded with a dirty cloth. It was scary to not know where you were or who was talking to you.

I was in Prague for interrogation. This is another experience that I cannot share with you. Thank God for the mechanisms of the human mind that have allowed me to forget, at least for a while, these tragic experiences. But I cannot forget the memories which come to me in bad dreams - the interrogations of the other prisoners. We could not see them, but we could hear their screams. Even now I can still hear their screams.

We were tried in Prague. What was so unusual about these trials was that the sentences were prepared before we were accused of any crime. We were a group of 17 prisoners, and the prosecutor asked for the maximum sentence - death - for all of us. Fourteen of us received sentences from ten years to life in prison; three received the death penalty, one of whom was executed. After the trial we felt the number of years in our sentences really didn't make a difference; the main thing was that, in a rough Czech translation, the head stayed on the shoulders. We were alive.

For ten years I went from ward to ward, camp to camp. But whatever prison I found myself in, there was always a pitch-black punishment cell reserved for prisoners who showed disrespect to the guards. We could not live without laughter, and we survived. For those who did not survive, and for their families, the Federation of Political Prisoners of Czechoslovakia built a monument in Toronto which depicts a countryman crucified on a hammer and sickle. All who see the monument are moved by the spirit of our suffering it displays.

Eda Ottova, the North American representative for the Federation of Czechoslovakian Political Prisoners, spoke at a benefit at the Czechoslovakian Embassy on behalf of the organization. The speech is an important revelation of the abuses of human rights that occurred in Czechoslovakia under the Communist regime.