“These armed men, they left us, but then crowds came, crowds of boys, old men. They were ragged, some wrapped only in rags. Some were pushing bikes that had no tires, as they had stolen them somewhere, they were just leaning on it. It was terrible how they came back. Among them, the prisoners who dug trenches somewhere on that front were still returning. He was there in Zruč when the local train crossed to Kutná Hora, so there was a giant chestnut tree, under which sat such an old man... when I think back... an old man with a young man and they said they were French. We had windows from grandfather's farm just facing that chestnut. The cousin went there and he just found out that they were the French coming back. Someone shot him there.”
"I was in the army for a fortnight and a letter came from my mother. I had a cousin who was from Kamenický Šenov, and he studied chemistry in Pardubice and worked at Slovnaft in Bratislava. The boys looked out there, when the steamer was going to Děvín from Bratislava, so at one point that the guard boat that was traveling with them on the port side, there were Czechs on one side and Austria on the other, so they looked out that at one point this guard boat, where they had a machine gun, engaged, and they jumped into the river and swam to Austria. It turned out pretty stupid, but this cousin of mine swam over there and sent my mother a clipping from an Austrian newspaper, he sent her: 'Bloody Sunday on the Danube' was the headline and they described it there. They had machine guns on that ship, the guys didn't count on that. This boy, this cousin, he loved my sister, so they, through my sister, still wanted to lure him to the point of capturing him back. They didn't succeed, even when they brought the sister to the border, she refused. So, my mother sent me this clipping to the war. I wrote him back, I smuggled the writing into the city, because we didn't have it back then, I was in the acceptance period and there were no outings for us, so I wrote him back and they caught it all. So, I was interrogated by counterintelligence. The interrogations, I didn't know if it was during the day or at night because they kept shining on me, a darkened room. So, I came back and was already reassigned to the company of cablemen.”
"The Russians came, so I quit the party. The checks have begun. Even when the Russians came, when they drove through Prague with a tank and searched for the warehouses of the militiamen to show them as weapons of the counter-revolution, I was an official in the ROH, I think even the chairman. So we who participated in the Prague Spring were to guard the weapons. So I stood guard there at night and the chief of the militia of our company was also there with me. We sat there in the evening like this at the table and waited to see if the Russians would come and rob the warehouse or not. We were waiting there and he took out the gun like this and put it on the table in front of him. And I said: 'Are you stupid or what?' I've had a higher rank there. ‘What would you do about it?’ And he said, ‘I´d shot, if you resisted them, I would shoot you.’ I said, ‘Fuck you, would you shoot me?’ Back then, it was terrible that our people, not the Germans, but our people, that they suddenly decided to be such swine." - "Then what is the difference between war for you?" - "That is the big difference."
“Checks. Yet another senate. There was a party chairman in the senate, there was someone from the district committee, then there was Mrs. Hambálková, an engineer from Kapko, he was the first Prague secretary, from his secretariat, that is, Ing. Hambálková. Just the senate. Now they were all trembling as to what they would say there. They all had to say that they were glad to have freed us, that's how they imagined that the Russians had freed us. So the guys were arguing with each other there, I said: 'I won't argue, I won't argue.' So I came there in front of the commission and they said: 'Well, comrade, what do you say that brotherly help us...? ' And I said: 'However, I am not a comrade, I quit, you certainly know that, and on the one hand, I am fundamentally against it. I don't agree.' The very first question was: 'Do you agree with this occupation?' Hambálková started: 'Then explain it to us!' I said: 'Be aware that the Soviet Union would never do this, it's a conspiracy of American imperialists, what happened here!' Now they were staring, they didn't know. The interview ended immediately. The recorder asked the Hambálková, what he should write there. And she said that the comrade says that this is a conspiracy of the American imperialists, that he does not agree with it. And they, idiots, wrote it there. So, I have it in writing that he doesn't agree with the brotherly help, that he considers it the work of American imperialists."
"When I went to my aunt in Náchod, she came to pick me up, so between Kolín and Velký Osek... a boiler, a plane, an American fighter circled above us. The driver blew his horn and we all had to run off that train. Back then, the cars had... each compartment had its own door, so all the doors opened. We flew away like that across the field. So he flew in for the second time and shot into the boiler of that machine, it was completely accurate, beautifully thought out, that he cut it completely like that. He was shooting from us, he flew over us, he flew about two meters, three meters above us. I saw the man there, you couldn't see his face. He came back like this and fired one more shot just to be sure and some of the bullet ricocheted and a lady was running next to us. She was a lady to me then, but maybe she could have been about your age, and the ricocheted bullet took a piece of her arm here and she bled out there. We, when we were going back to that train, she was white... That was a terrible sight."
"We went on foot along the state road Kutná Hora - Tábor. On that stretch, it was about 200-300 meters at most, an open car with an open roof overtook us. An officer in uniform with a long whip and another person got out of it. Then my mother told me that he was probably a German from the Sudetenland, because he spoke Czech, but bad Czech, the German only spoke German. When we were preparing to visit aunt, I chose the nicest decorations we had for the tree, because I liked that aunt, so I chose five pieces from it. These were ornaments, at that time glass balls were strung on a wire and it was used to make a wheelbarrow or a machine, so I chose these five ornaments for her and wrapped them in cotton wool. I had such a briefcase made of cotton and I kept it folded in there. We went to visit our aunt. When we were stopped, my mother had such a bag, so she had to open it and take everything out onto the asphalt. I was suspicious, the nurse was still with us, I was suspicious that I had a briefcase, so I had to open it. I opened it and the officer came to it and used the whip to break the cotton wool like this, and when he saw the decorations, he threw them on the asphalt like this with the whip. I need to rest. It still makes me sick today. That helplessness. Mom held me like that, I wanted to kick him."
Miroslav Mazaný was born on February 13, 1938 in Zruč nad Sázavou. He studied at the municipal, later at the municipal school and also at the gymnasium in Ledeč nad Sázavou. He completed his university studies remotely while working at the University of Transport. He worked with the first computers in Czechoslovakia – Ural and Leo 326. He was a member of Pionýr and for a time also of the Communist Party of the Czech Republic, from which he left after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. Due to misdemeanors, he was demoted from his rank in the military and was wanted by the State Security for a long time. In the seventies, he was friends with members of the Drama Club. He became personally involved in the revolutionary events in 1989. After the revolution, he progressed in his career, retiring from the position of director of the department in the Health Insurance Company of the Ministry of the Interior. He also holds the highest hunting rank. In 2022 he lived in Prague.
