Ing. Jiří Marel

“There was martial law – nobody was allowed to go out. But even the Russians knew that we were coming from the train and our police was there. They accompanied us – our policemen – and we ended up in Vinohrady near Flora. There is a hotel there and we spent the night there until five in the morning – they didn’t allow us to leave earlier because there was fighting going on close to the Radio building. We spent the night at the reception. About one hundred people were sitting there at the reception and on the stairs, wherever they could. In the morning we walked past the Radio building. I saw a bus destroyed by shooting, cars smashed by tanks, a burnt tank, a house with a hole which had been probably hit by a tank. Then the Museum building, and we walked over Wenceslas Square and the Museum building had holes from shooting. We lived in Bělohorská Street, and I thus had to walk through Wenceslas Square, and then cross the bridge to Klárov and walk up Nerudova Street and I reached home in the morning (I could have walked some ten or twelve kilometres from Malešice). I immediately went to stand in a queue for bread. My father-in-law had been standing there before and I went to take turns with him.”

“My wife then moved out of Prague with both our children to the apartment that we were given there. I experienced the occupation in 1968 there. For about a year they were waiting what attitude people would take towards it, and then, during the normalization period, as it was called, they decided to do personal interviews with everybody. We had to reply in writing, too, and in about four pages we had to write our answers to various questions about our views on the issues. During the interview, I simply told them that I didn’t agree with the entry of the Warsaw Pact Armies, and I even added that the Russians had been always blackmailing us, that we had been forced to supply them with uranium ore and steel for their tanks. They expelled me from the Party and then from the army as well. About one quarter of us professional soldiers left the army, there were many of us.”