David Kabzan

“Just before the revolution, my mum moved to Prague and I stayed with her at a lodging house. Suddenly, three Volha cars arrived. I knew that they were after me so I jumped out of the window and ran away. They got mum. She said she didn’t know where I was. I knew this was bad. Instinctively, I knew I had to escape, so I went to Tanvald to the cottage of our friends. I spent about a month there. During that period they detained my whole family and my friends. They claimed that I ran over a pedestrian somewhere in Svitavy. That was quite serious, that would have been attempted murder. But I never drove a car in my life; to this day I don’t have the license. It was absurd. They claimed to have a witness, a lady whom I was supposed to buy window cleaning sheets at. While still at Tanvald, I met Petr Placák who told me that this was a common strategy, to make up a cause for arrest. So I hid in Tanvald. When I returned the next month, it was October or November already. I was summoned because of the claimed car accident and there was about to be a trial. As I walked to the court room at Ovocný trh to testify, a hundred thousand people walked past me to demonstrate. I rang the bell and asked whether I was going to be interrogated. They just laughed and sent me off.”

“A couple months before November 1989, we, the dissident youth, decided to create an opposition organization to the Socialist Youth Association, establishing the Independent Students’ Association. We gave it such an ostentations name but there were only about five of us. We began to set it all up. It was before the anniversary of Jan Opletal’s death, 17 November, so we planned to organize a public march through the Wenceslas square to Opletal’s street. However, we found out that the official Youth Association was also organizing something. Those people were to us what the communists were for the signatories of Charter 77. We found out that they were about to gather the night before in the wine bar u Bílého koníčka, and finalize the practicalities there. So we decided to meet them there, distribute leaflets and invite them to join our event. Our idea was to disrupt their event. I don’t remember exactly who was there apart from Monika Pajerová and Martin Mejstřík. We handed out our materials telling them that they can meet us at Albertov but that after that we would march downtown. They said, no way. So we brought our own statement to their event. As Pajerová began reading their statement, I stood some five meters from her. I saw secret police everywhere, even my agent Beran. I knew they couldn’t arrest us there since it was a permitted event of the Youth Association. I just stood as close to Pajerová as I could, knowing that they wouldn’t go after me there. She was reading her speech, not knowing what was going on. Then the agents moved to the city walls, but still, everything was legal. At that moment, we got hold of the loudspeaker and started reading our statement. We told them that it was necessary to set foot and march through the city, not go home as intended. For several hours we would read this statement over and over again. Then I and my brother found a path leading from the city walls towards the main road leading to Národní třída. Our aim was to make people demonstrate. Using the loudspeaker we convinced them to march towards St. Wencelsas statue. This was our last successful dissident intervention. We disrupted a different event and managed to gather people at Národní třída. I think most of the credit for that goes to us. Apart from me, there were David Lipovský, leading member of the Independent Students’ Association, my brother and a couple friends. Two girls whose names I forgot. There were about six of us. I think that if it were up to the Socialist Youth Association’s representatives, there would have been no march.”