"I always put a huge American flag on my fence when the date of liberation by the US Army came. It was the size of a double bed sheet. The Ráček family lived next door to me, they had a yellow painted house and the American flag was clearly visible against the yellow facade. As soon as you passed under the railway bridge from Mariánské Lázně, a huge American flag caught your eye. I always put it up and my wife and I would make coffee and guess how long it would take the cops to arrive. Sometimes they'd be there in ten minutes, sometimes they'd take two hours. The last time before the revolution, that's just the piquant experience of how one's life is like a sine wave. One day you're up, the next you're down. I worked at the JZD Trstenice just before the revolution and I put up the flag as usual in May or late April. Coincidentally, it was the military oath ceremony in the barracks at the time. When they came for me about two hours later and took me for interrogation, the StB took me to this little chamber in the attic. I asked who snitched this year. They said, 'You'll be surprised, Mr. Bartůšek, but we got eleven phone calls from the parents of soldiers from Slovakia who came to the oath ceremony to see their sons.' And of course the obligatory interrogation followed, where I claimed it was a sheet that we had washed and put out to dry. One year later, I was the deputy mayor and was preparing the celebration of the liberation by the US Army, and I convened a working group which of course included the chief of police. When we finished that meeting, he came to me and said, 'Mr. Bartůšek, do you know where we could get an American flag to put on the police station, on our house?' I said, 'If you had been consistent last year and confiscated mine, you would have had the biggest flag in the district.' So that's interesting in the way that life sometimes shakes you up."
"We [with Milan Knížák] witnessed this event together. He worked at the waste water treatment plant at the time, and he borrowed a tractor, and I got a barrel of lime from the bricklayers here at the United Services. We loaded it onto the tractor and Knížák painted various signs on the main street. There used to be a huge red star near Slovanský dům, across the street from here, installed on the corner for years, and would light up at nigh with power and light bulbs. Milan wrote this at the crossroads: 'Behold, the five-pointed star, the Czech nation is dying under it'. As the marc went the next day, the general strike [after August 1968], the front of the march stopped for the people to read the messages, and I saw the incredible power of the crowd: the star had to come down. A strange man offered to do it. He had lived here for a few years, a man named Hans, he was a mestizo from West Germany where he'd made his living as a sparring partner in boxing. He was a brave guy. He borrowed a hacksaw from the caretaker in Slovanský dům and climbed out of the window on the ledge to the star and started sawing it off. It was anchored with two metal beams embedded in the wall. He cut one, and the star still held. When he started sawing the second one, the star tilted and the crowd roared. When the star fell to the ground, all you saw was a huge crowd of people. Then when we went on, and the star was crumpled, like a giant took and crumpled it like plasticine, yet it was a solid material - "L" profile steel. The crowd was so forceful it bent the star completely, and then it hung on a lamp post at the corner at that intersection for many days."
Václav Bartůšek was born in Teplice on 23 April 1946. His parents came from the Benešov region; his father Václav Bartůšek Sr. was a farmer in Nesvačily. His uncles Jan and Josef Bartůšeks received heavy sentences in the 1950s as private farmers and members of the Agrarian Party. Václav’s parents moved to the borderland after the war, first to Klimentov near Mariánské Lázně and then to the centre of Mariánské Lázně. His father worked as the head of a butcher shop and his mother helped in the shop. In his youth Václav read a lot and took up tramping from the age of 13. Following primary school, he went to a technical high school in Loket but did not finish. He worked as a digger building railways until 1964. He took his mandatory military training in 1964-1967 with a motorized artillery regiment in Prachatice. After his return, he became involved in the cultural life of Mariánské Lázně. During the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, he took part in protests. In the following years of normalisation, he expressed his disagreement with the regime, for example by flying the American flag on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War. He held a number of jobs, including as a timber worker, salesman and driver. He graduated from a secondary school of economics and then from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University (FF UK) where he earned a doctorate in cultural theory. In the 1970s and 1980s, he organised folk and country concerts in and around Mariánské Lázně under the moniker “Stagecoach Swaps”. These events became an important part of the cultural life of the region and a refuge from the grey normalisation. In 1989, he signed Charter 77 and planned emigrating to Australia, even selling his family home. However, his plans were changed on 17 November 1989. He took part in the Civic Forum in Mariánské Lázně and became a councillor and deputy mayor. In the 1990s, he tried his hand at business. He is still active as an electrician and operates a mobile café. The witness’s recollections were filmed and processed thanks to the financial support of the town of Mariánské Lázně.
