Tag #139751 - Interview #78049 (Pavel Fried)

Before 1989 [the fall of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia] I managed to visit my cousins in London a few times, to which they had escaped from Vienna at the beginning of World War II. I always had big problems getting an exit visa. In fact for a few years in the 1970s I had no passport. The confiscation of my passport was caused by the following events: In 1968 I received a letter written in broken Czech. It contained anti-government proclamations. Suspecting that it was a provocation I handed the letter over to our director for him to do with as he thought best. He gave it to the police.