Petr Hejna

"Within a year, the nation lost its pride and just sold his soul, scared itself, to put it politely. It wasn't a big deal, it wasn't like there was shooting on every corner. So of course, it was terrible, if you take the victims of Palach and Zajíc, or even abroad, because for us, people got burned... got... they burned themselves voluntarily. Well, just, a couple of these heroes, I feel deeply sorry for them, because they had no idea what kind of bastard were pouring petrol just into a car. It was the Palach´s funeral that I attended, where the nation was still united, of course I was lucky, well, lucky, in Prague, it was no problem to go there to see it. But we were still on the same boat, but I don't know how many secret ones [policemen] were in the funeral cortege then."

"So the military administration arranged for me to go to one of those new Auxiliary Engineering Corps units: We were quite proud to say, it was a Road Construction Corps unit or something like that, we had excavators and compasses on our epaulettes. We weren't allowed to shoot of course, because apart from us, the politically unreliable ones, I might have got in anyway, because I, of course, wasn't inclined to the normalization regime, and we also got money for it, but as I say, apart from us unreliable ones, ninety percent of the people there were criminals. It was also better to keep them away from the rifle, don't play with the gun. So the environment was, because of the variety of people, the majority of people, it was very different. It was educational in that you could find out that we weren't all bohemians who were reading and listened to and making music, so it was a strange thing. But nonetheless, I didn't have to be on the borderline somewhere guarding the borders against these enemies that were running into Germany from us. So it was good, and being a handy boy I got over it very quickly, apart from the humiliating beginning when I was the only one there who didn't let himself being beaten on the arse with a belt. I was even older than they were, because I'd been going to the university for a while in the meantime, and it was just... then I got the hang of it, in a way that I could write a new King Rat about."

"So he kept this little notebook about me where he would write down whatever I did well, and it was maybe one line, and five lines of what I didn't do. And they, when they were expelling him from the party, when the purges were going on, because my mother had friends there, as he was working at the State Planning Commission, some of these people were there who told her that he was crying and tearing his clothes and quoting from this notebook about what an impossible son he had at home. And even that didn't help him, even an asshole like me didn't get him a place in the party. But the purges were really... they needed to get rid of him so that they could report a job done, right, and it was the poor people who really trusted the party who paid for it. And then, like I said, later on, when I finished the graphics school, he arranged the military service for me. I had already been admitted to university at that time and they told me: You're going to serve your time in the army. He had friends in the military administration again, and they, as the soldiers were so stupid, they thought that if they make me work somewhere with a bunch of thugs and I wouldn´t be allowed to shoot, that it was some kind of punishment for me. Well, it was punishment in a way, but I got paid some money and sailed through it like King Rat, but for me, an opponent of all violence and guns, it was still annoying and two years of my life [were] stolen for nothing."

"It was a terrible shock how someone could do that, and anyway, there was the misinformation that they had given him some cold petrol, the Americans, to make it look like theatre. Everything was being done to discredit his sacrifice. Like [saying] he was a victim of the CIA. Just the guy was so disgusted by all of it, I just don't understand how he even managed it. I couldn't do it and I'm sorry he did it at all because it was, unfortunately, a cry in vain. And then Zajíc followed, and he's almost forgotten... It was really an ugly time, and we were watching the funeral, we joined in, and it was such a demonstration that back then, really, we were all in the same boat, and it wasn't Potemkin or Aurora [Russian battleships]. It was a completely different boat. A freedom [svoboda in Czech] boat. I don't mean Ludvík Svoboda, he was still acceptable for both sides then, but of course his influence and admiration for him faded away over time. But it was a time when even as a child one admired the leaders of the state. Yes, you were proud of Dubček, Smrkovský or Císař. Nowadays... I know those names by heart and it's hard to talk about any admiration at all. For me it ended with Mr. Havel."

"They already knew it was bad. But we cowboys and Indians couldn't imagine it. Because nobody knew that it could turn into such repression. Maybe you could have counted on getting some kind of a truncheon beating across the back, but to see it end up in the kind of massacre that happened there…of course, I didn't feel like a hero anymore, of course I had already gone soft there, I was already scared. Because there were already various armed men, as the militiamen, the same ones we had fought with while we were applauded by the public, they already had guns, already loaded. That was bad, bad... then you could see that it wasn't the Russian anymore, it was our guy, from a factory, who knew what was right, so that was the end. But practically, the movement was very limited, because the streets were closed, so we were going in circles around Wenceslas Square, I don't know if we were in Smečky or in Štěpanská [Street], on that side, so it was…you felt like a hunted animal there. That was no longer the case [that we went there] just to see who would say what and that maybe something would change. It was clear that everything had already changed, that we had better remain sitting on our asses. There was no time to play a hero any more. We went there more recklessly but still being aware of why we were going there. But not [expecting] that it could have turned out that way. And here, for example, you probably have heard that this is where the youngster who got shot at Pavlák [I.P. Pavlova Square] came from. I mean, they shot him and he died three or four days later. He was there purely by accident. And that's the paradox, that he was coming back from some wander, and then he went to see an aunt in Nusle to get money, and then he went to buy a sausage at the stall there and caught it [the bullet] in the stomach."