Jaromír Mergl

"I only remember [more] from around when I was six years old, and unfortunately, that was in 1968. I was six, and some memories remained. Back then we went to Italy to the seaside, and we came back on the 21st [of August] at around nine or ten [o'clock] in the evening. And from what my dad told me, at the Austrian-Czechoslovakian border, they were already telling him, 'Turn around, go back. There are Russian tanks there.' But my dad, as he had this younger brother, and my grandmother was alone in the house... I don't know if my dad made a mistake. I think he did. He should have turned around, and we should have stayed there. But he came back. And those are my first memories of my dad, if you're asking about that. Then, I remember slightly when I was a kid, and then my mom told me... I guess that was the first trouble. Dad went to demonstrate one time, probably on the 23rd [of August]. Everyone from Agroproject got together and went to the radio station, like everybody else at that time. There, they put up those banners against the occupiers. Except my dad lost me–a six-year-old boy–there because he was engaged in what he was engaged in. It must have been terrible for him. Well, he lost me there. I got lost there. I was only six, so what could I possibly be interested in? Tanks, soldiers. And then I was brought back to my father by - he wasn't Russian, I have a feeling, I don't know, maybe he was Bulgarian, but I think it was a friend from the GDR, and he gave me a pin. He found my father and brought me back to him. And I think he [my dad] didn't even beat me up. I don't know, I don't remember. What made it worse for my dad was that sometime, I think, in January 1968 - even after everything that had happened in our family and what the commies had done to my grandfather - he decided that he would reform the Communist Party from the inside. So he joined, I guess, in January or February 1968, and then, of course, they fired him in '69."

"The Masaryk monument here near us was fatal to my grandfather. They first, I think, tore it down [in 1940] when the Gestapo tore it down. I have a feeling they melted the statue down in the Škoda factory back then. At that time, my grandfather, being a Masaryk and a Beneš adherent, wanted to go and defend it somehow. But from what my grandmother told me, she must have locked him up at home, and he didn't get into trouble. It wasn't until 1953, after the currency reform, when my grandfather went there with the Škoda employees, and by then, the border guards, the People's Militias, were already there. And I think that, as my grandmother told me, Comrade actor Větrovec also arrived. They threw a noose around Masaryk's neck and started tearing him down. And that's when my grandfather somehow got involved in the demonstration against the currency reform. Well, they arrested him, of course. My grandmother said that in the evening, his friend from work came to tell her, 'They took Franta. He's probably in Bory.' And they went there the next day. Grandpa was physically fit, he was a committed member of the Sokol. He was 55 years old at the time. But he had some mild diabetes. So they took things [like] a toothbrush, some of his medication, and they went to Bory with that. They didn't bother with them at all. They kicked them out saying, 'Be glad you're not going to end up here too.' They didn't even take the pills, nothing. Well, then they waited. Waiting and waiting. Nobody knew anything, nothing was said. They arrested a lot of people back then. It was actually the first big demonstration here against the commies since '48. Then, apparently, out of the blue, after about 12 days, a policeman rang our house and told my grandmother that she was to come and collect my grandfather's clothes. So they went there and got the clothes, but there was no further information. To this day, we still don't know what happened, how my grandfather died, if he died naturally, if he was beaten or what happened. The family never received his body."

"That [our band Jazz Rhinitis] was doing well for a while, we were almost getting famous. And I have one great memory with Rhinitis. After the revolution, sometime on the 22nd or 23rd [of November] - it was the day Jakeš quit. We were playing at Svornost at that time. I don't remember exactly with whom. Whether the Wart was performing with us, I don't know. We played with somebody in Svornost. And that was already the post-revolutionary euphoria. We knew the commies were leaving and that it would be good. Svornost was packed to the rafters then, a great experience. One of our hits with [Jazz] Rhinitis was 'They Cancelled the Army'. And there were some soldiers, and when we performed it, they started ripping their uniforms off. They were ripping it off just like that. Brilliant! And somebody from backstage came in and said, 'Hey, Jakeš just quit! They fell!' And that was the day they sort of called it off, their central committee. They elected some loser, Urbánek, I think. And that was simply great. To tell the packed hall of those people who were already in some kind of euphoria that the monster Jakeš had quit. I remember that to this day. That was very good."