Bořivoj Černý

"How did it turn out in the People's Defence?"- "There were the first checks in the early seventies, I passed. There were second checks, they fired the editor then, I still passed. Then there were third checks, I didn't pass that. Sixteen people were supposed to leave the army publishing house, only two of us left in the end."-"What did they ask you at the background checks?"-"If I agreed or disagreed with the [occupation armies] arrival, if I approved or disapproved of fraternal support. I said that the occupation had surprised me. Of course, at the first two checks they corrected me that it was fraternal support. Actually, there were people in the commission who wanted to help me rather than do me any harm. It was only when a new editor-in-chief came in that it pepped up."-"How old were you when you were fired?"-"I was the youngest journalist fired because of 1968, I was twenty-five."

"Láďa Ježek and I were a funny pair of guys, he was 160 centimetres tall, I was two metres tall. We used to work together on reports, at Dukla, it was always a fuss when we arrived. Once, I didn´t work in Obrana [People´s Defence] anymore, I was just visiting there, I saw Láďa writing a report. The local chairman of the Socialist Youth Union came to say that he was raising money, five crowns for a memorial of a fallen Soviet soldier. Láďa told him not to bother him, that he was busy, to come back in a while. These were probably the last sentences that Láďa Ježek uttered in the People´s Defence, and he was fired without notice. "Who was this man, the chairman of the Socialist Youth Union?" - "When Cibulka's lists [Lists of State Security collaborators and agents, published after the Velvet Revolution] came out, I found the gentleman there. But I was surprised that as a young boy he behaved that way."

"At Cibulky, at the courts, famous people and journalists used to go there. There was also Mr Falada from the Mladá fronta publishing house. I went to him, we talked and I asked him if I could get a job as a freelancer at the newspaper. Fortunately, an opportunity at the Agricultural Newspaper [Zemědělské noviny] presented itself, which was an incredible editorial office, a sort of the First republic newspaper. The floors creaked, it smelled of cigars and pipes. When they turned on the rotary press downstairs, the house would shake under your feet. Today, there is a huge glass monster at the corner of Opletalova Street and Wenceslas Square. I started there in 1965, doing things that weren't suitable for the pros who were employed there permanently. I took photos of minor sports... but what's a minor sport? But I had a journalist pass, even though it was just editorial pass. It was enough back then, I took photos of league football, all sports. I could get everywhere on my journalist pass."

"I want to go back to the fact that after the occupation there was a big action in the barracks to support Dubček and the government. [We thought] we would help them by joining the party. So I got the red book with the others, about a month later. It was quick, and then I returned to civilian life and went to work normally at Stavoservis. Then the April plenary session came, they elected Husák, there was no support for Dubček, so I threw my party card on the table. That started my political career in later years."

"But the Russians had their radio broadcast and we, with our equipment, were jamming it. And they didn't like that. Once, when I was at the gate, the Russians arrived on a motorcycle with a sidecar and a machine gun, and behind it a GAZ car with officials, and they said they wanted to talk to the commander. I went to our unit chief and told him what was going on. We had loaded machine guns in those days, before that we served without weapons. So the chief took them to the commander and then we could hear the Russian yelling at our people that in Russia they were hanging people like them."