They stuffed pills in my mouth

In March 1953, Ida Milotová found herself in a pre-trial prison in Prague-Ruzyně: "They invented an anti-state group that I was supposedly in charge of, lurking somewhere in the woods in the Cheb region." The group had the cover name "I" and because Mrs. Milotová's first name is "Ida," she had to be its leader. "I had the cell number 118. Every night, they took me away from my cell for the interrogation and in the morning at six o'clock, I went back to my cell but I wasn't allowed to sleep. When I closed my eyes, they would kick in the door and shout: 'don't sleep!' Thus, for eight days and eight nights I was awake," she recalled. In order to keep her sanity, Ida Milotová walked her tiny cell from the window to the door and counted the steps. By the time she had counted just over three thousand steps, she suddenly went blind on one eye. "Suddenly I fell face-down on the wall. My face hit the wall and scraped downwards on it. I felt that the wall was rough and cold but I didn't pass out. I think it happened because of the pills that they had stuffed me with. A doctor in a white coat with khaki socks and khaki pants would come to my cell regularly. He gave me some pills of the size of a current aspirin pill. He came accompanied by four guards who would hold me tight as he stuffed the pills in my mouth. At first I spat it out because I was afraid but they eventually managed to make me swallow it. I think that they used the pills in order to daze me. Eventually, I went completely blind in both eyes and I later found out that I didn't remember anything from the interrogations," she remembered. Ida Milotová didn't tell anybody about her blindness because she was afraid that they would take advantage of it during the interrogations. She eventually recovered her vision, but nevertheless she would suffer from problems with her sight for a long time after her release from prison.