Josef Dufek

“I saw a few killings in the streets of Prague. I remember we were reaching Letná Tunnel, and in those days, trams that you could get off while they were in motion were still running. Some young mother with her child jumped off a tram and there was this Russian APC, and it shot the mother to smithereens. We were the first ones to arrive on the scene, he must have had some fright or something… So many times, people sent us down to check something out, say, there’s a tank stuck in the underpass just off Malostranské Square. There’s one lane for cars and one for trams and he thought he would get through. One guy pointed it out to us and indicated to take a picture of it. One day I was driving from the general staff in the so-called ‘Kulaťák’ Square towards Letná and there was this small bridge and on it was stood an anti-aircraft twin-gun. A Russian officer was standing by it, complete with his flat hat, legs wide apart and hands on his hips. And my colleagues says: ,Pull over a touch, let me take a picture of him.’ So, I swerved a little, the pavement on the bridge under which trains were running was broad. He was standing there with his anti-aircraft twin-gun, hands on his hips, I swerved a little and he got a shot of him. And the next thing I saw was the officer reach for his gun and I crouched under the steering wheel – you turn left, going into Letná – and all I could hear was the ping, ping of his bullets. He didn’t think twice and shot at our car twice. So, such were some of my experiences from the military service.”

“When it was time for me to choose a profession… I was in my eighth or nineth grade and I was meant to choose my future job. My parents had never been members of the Party. At the time, my father was a loom-house foreman, and he told me himself that one day a Party application form turned up on his office desk. A loom-house is a dusty place, so when my father hadn’t touched it for a while and it had collected half an inch of dust, it disappeared again. And I was confronted with the repercussions when it was time for me to choose a profession. My mother usually went to parents’ evenings, and she got told that, in the light of my family’s political views, she was not to expect her son to get into any kind of school. Naturally, I was eyeing an art school, the nearest one being the applied arts school of glassmaking in Železný Brod. They didn’t even let me try my luck in the practical exam. No way, they said, apparently, I was to go into farming, mining, or other such areas. My mum said, surely, you’re not going to send him farming when he’s the best artist of his school? And so the headmaster Valenta decided I would become a window dresser.”