A:

Oh absolutely rehearsed. Those trials and the question and answers were completely arranged by the Secret Police. At the end of my interrogations, the Secret Police put together a series of questions with the answers, which they wrote at the end. And we had each of the, well, of those who were led to, in front of the Supreme Court, as witness or defendant. We had to learn that by heart, and we were given several days for that, and we were rehearsed, whether to what extent we already know that by heart. But that was, that was their text. It was their text. Well taken from the confessions we were forced to make, but at the end the formulation was theirs. The phraseology was theirs, that phraseology of the, of the Secret Police plus party apparatus, put together. That everybody who knew us in life, knew that it is not our language. That is a repetition of something which was put to us to repeat.

A:

Oh that would, the trial would have been: If a defendant would not keep to the text, learned by heart, then the trial would be immediately stopped and the defendant would be taken back to the Secret Police and the whole thing would start again until he would be prepared to obey. That means, that means he would have been put to various psychological and physical kinds of torture to force him to obey. And that was, in that state of mind in which I was after a year and a half. That was a prospect so unacceptable that everything to avoid it, was better than that. There was a very interesting episode in this respect. Shortly before my trial started, when I was already taken from prison to the Supreme Court here, the head of the interrogation team came to me, to tell me that the general attorney, the procurator as he was called, will put to me an additional question, to the learned one's. He will ask me whether I joined the Communist Party for career reasons. He himself was a man who joined the Communist Party very late after, I don't know what he was, a Social Democrat or something. He himself joined the Communist Party for career reasons after the Communist Party came to power. So I let him know that he shouldn't do that. Never-the-less he did. He put that question to me and I answered that very pointedly, that at the time when I joined the Communist movement nobody did so for career reasons, and he understood, and became, he became very uncertain of himself suddenly, he said yes yes, but afterwards, illogical. That was the only deviation from the text prescribed and learnt by heart.

A:

Yes, yes I did confess. Yes I did.

A:

Oh well it came about after hours and hours, and days and weeks of interrogation in the same way. AI saw there is no way out. There is no way out, and I knew that should I try to, to recant my confession I would be put to tremendous well, I don't know, terrorist physical and mental terrorist reply. There was no way out. At the end of my stay in prison whealready the situation changed and some of the cases started to be reviewed, one of the first. The military attorney which was charged with preparing me for the liberation, told me, look if what I know today of the situation, at that time, I would have confessed already in that lift on the first day.

A:

Well the purpose was to eliminate certain persons of the, of positions of influence, or power, who became somehow, whose loyalty to the new cause let's say, might have been dented. And who were chosen very systematically as the persons to be disposable. To be thrown out, on the heap of, well, what is this called in their language, the heap of history.

A:

Yes.

A:

Look, at the very beginning of my interrogation, when I was accused of having committed crimes, the existence of which was unknown to me, not even that I should take part. I saw that the whole system is built on a lie, and I saw that I believed I was loyal to something which was built on a lie. That was the horrible shock of the horrible, of that experience of being arrested and accused. And I said to myself, that if I succeed in getting out of it ever again, and I had no idea how that could happen, but never-the-less if I get out of that ever again, I would live to the end of my life on the basis of my own head, and not on the basis of general instructions of general ideas. And I believed that that, in which I believed, can be brought back, can be how, that that system is reformable. And that I will do whatever I can in that way of reforming that system towards democracy, towards democratisation, that is what I did ever after my liberation.