Letter from Prison

2x

Each letter from prison had to be censored, because it might have contained some forbidden information, complaints about treatment, or a negative comment on Communism. It was a censor who finally decided whether a letter would be sent or not. Unsent letters have been stored in personal files of the prisoner. Small things in a letter were blackened so the reader could not read it. Prisoners themselves sometimes called these letters to be stylistic essays because they could never freely write about what they had felt, lived through, or what their anguishes were. Mrs. Stuchlíková here writes a letter to her parents, where she is by the way also asking them, to bring her some little things she was missing in prison when they are coming for the next visit. What were the little things she wanted we cannot find out though, since the censor completely blackened this part of the letter. We can only argue and guess what was anti-communist and improper about the words.