Tag #154183 - Interview #90538 (Ignac Neubauer)

The longer I lived in the soviet regime, the more I hated it. There was no freedom in the USSR and we got used to freedoms in Subcarpathia, particularly during the Czech rule. We could speak our minds without suspecting KGB informers in everybody else. Besides, we lived near the border and to travel to another town we had to obtain a permit from militia and have our passports stamped. We couldn’t buy train tickets if we didn’t have a stamp; and there was another stamp to be obtained for each trip. We could only walk in the town with our passport. Before I got married my friends and I often accompanied girls home in the evening. There were frontier guard patrols walking the town. They checked our documents and if the girl lived nearby they let her go home, but we couldn’t walk with her. Even to go to the woods we needed passports. In 1951 I went to get some wood for stoves in the forest and left my passport at home. In the woods a patrol stopped me. I had no documents, so they put me in their vehicle and took me to the militia office. They reported of having captured a spy. I was lucky that their commander was my client who had picked his new suit just the day before. We said ‘hello’ and laughed. He released the soldier. But how was I to go home without documents? I asked him to issue a card stating that they detained me, checked and released me.  He said he didn’t have the right to issue such paper, but he promised to call all posts to tell them to let me go. There were other incidents; it’s hard to name them all. Could one live in this country? It was also hard from the material point of view. There were lines in stores and one had to stand for hours before buying a thing. What is this country like where people are not free and also, are miserably poor! For me to love this country, the country had to love me, but we lived like it was a prison. Sometimes it seemed to me that we had more freedom in the concentration camp.