Jan Kovanic

“At three in the afternoon, that was the second or the third day of the bigger demonstrations at Václav [a nickname for the statue of St Wenceslaus on Wenceslaus Square in Prague - transl.], my wife called me that she had heard that there were tanks on the way to Prague. That the tanks are supposed to intervene against the demonstration, that martial law would be declared. And that it wouldn’t be declared until half past three, so that people wouldn’t know about it and wouldn’t be able to cancel their trips. At the time it seemed quite possible. There were pamphlets with the phone numbers of the various organisations of the local civic forums, so I took a telephone and started calling them up. First I introduced myself with my name and my phone number, so they could verify it. I knew that if I was under surveillance, then I was a sitting duck, and I reckoned they knew which phone they were listening on anyway. I knew that it was the kind of moment when you have to do it: if the tanks come, it’ll be a massacre, but the Communists will go to hell. I called everyone and was told: ‘We already know it.’ Or: ‘We’re pulling our students out.’ Or: ‘Our boys have already left.’ The rumour was confirmed from numerous sides, at that point it meant factual certainty that the power is preparing to strike. And we knew that in August 1969 Czechoslovak tanks intervened and the militia shot people, that people were killed. I had my television on, I could see the text message there: ‘There will be a special announcement at 15:30, do not switch off, a special announcement at 15:30.’ I might have known. At three thirty I stopped phoning, I reckoned: ‘Nothing can be done now.’ There was a special announcement, but nothing of interest - there was no martial law. The interesting thing was that not so many students came that day, but that left all the more space for the other people, including workers and people from the surrounding area.”

“On the corner of Sokolská Street the Russians deployed a young soldier from a car, a poor eighteen-year-old sod. By that time there were already about eight people dead in Liberec, and a lot more wounded. The column passed on, he was left there in the middle of the crowd, people spat at him, spit and tears were running down his face. He was wearing a helmet with a star, which told us they were Soviets - because the tanks came from Germany and they had invasion crosses, I thought perhaps they were Germans. He cried that they told them the evening before that they would go home after the exercise, that he had just turned eighteen, and he was in a really poor state. So our people took mercy on him and brought him soup and bread, because they had deployed him there, the poor sod, all hungry and without food. Maybe they thought the people would tear him to pieces...”

“All of a sudden I saw a line of tanks coming up against me. And I remembered the film Blbec z Xeenemünde [The Dunce from Xeenemünde, a Czechoslovak war-drama-comedy film from 1962 - transl.], which was filmed there. It reminded me of that so much. And to top it all they came from Germany. They had those invasive stripes painted over them, those crosses at the front and then perpendicularly across the turret. I thought they were German tanks. And it was just awful. I ran down the stairs with my bike over my shoulder, and then I rode up the hill with no gear beside one of the tanks, shaking my little fist at the soldier standing on top of the turret. He turned towards me like this, and the machine gun, the barrel of the gun turned with him. Quite simply, I stopped shaking my little fist and I stopped immediately and made myself scarce. And I already saw there were bullets lodged into the local national committee [house], which stood on the corner with F. X. Šalda [Street]. When they had arrived to Frýdlant in the morning, they preventively shot up the street there.”

“The biggest spectacle was already over, with that tank number 314 that had crashed into the arcade on the eastern end of the Peace Fighters Square - nomen est omen - I don’t know why they left it there. It had knocked down to pillars, damaged one, somewhere between houses number 3 and 4; Fotografia - that is, the house had that word on its facade, and the photos later showed that the F had already fallen down. And [the tank] was covered in the rubble, and the other tanks drove round it, and those had already gone by then when I came there, so it was already in the situation when the people were pulling the wounded from the rubble and when three ambulances arrived and stopped at right angle behind the tank. Those were the low-roofed twelve-oh-ones, I think. And now what happened was that the tank started up and began reversing. It reversed out of the rubble, because [the crew] couldn’t have seen a thing, their front visors were blocked, the hatch was also blocked, so it reversed. And as it did so, the ambulances standing behind it began jumping up and down on their tyres, as it pushed them back. Then it pushed them away to both sides, so they were pretty mangled up. Then the hatch opened on the turret, the left-over rubble fell off, and a Soviet officer climbed out - he had a pistol and sub-machine gun, so he must have been the tank commander, and he needed to check which direction to go. But of course, because he had crashed it all up, the square and the ambulances, that was something of an impulse, you could feel it, the adrenaline started frothing - so you bastards come here, break everything up, you shoot people, and then you start destroying ambulances. Well just you wait, I’ll show you! And then he climbs out - so that was the situation that I’ve already described a number of times, so I have to be careful not to mess up how it actually happened. I was standing next to the boy, I measured it afterwards, it must have been some thirty metres from the tank. The square was already full of both splinters and bricks, whether whole or in pieces. And the boy picked up half a brick. The office, as he was surveying the square, he turned, and as he was turning, [the boy] hurled the brick at him. I saw the brick soar through the air along its trajectory, and it was that kind of endless moment, that kind of slow motion like in a film. It moved so slowly - surely he couldn’t throw it that far. And the officer is standing so high up on the tank. But he did hit!! Right between the soldier’s shoulder blades!!! It wasn’t recorded anywhere; then I’ll tell you what is said to have happened. He got it between his shoulder blades, luckily it didn’t hit his head. So he pulled out his pistol and fired it two or three times into the air. And that was when the blood started boiling in me - that he had the cheek to shoot around like that. So I made a step towards him to tell him what a clot he was, what did he think he was doing. And what he then did was that he pointed the pistol downwards in a semi-circle around the square. In that moment I had a complete black out - for two three seconds I have no idea what went on, but all of a sudden I was back around the corner of the town hall, some fifty metres away. I don’t know how. My friends were lying behind the steps and laughing at me, what a dunce I am, but then I saw a photograph of how the people were scattering in all directions under the barrel of the soldier’s pistol.”