Maria Müllerová Karastathi

“1989 - I remember that year quite clearly, because it all began with us in the National Theatre, so we all took part, all sections. It started with drama, then opera, ballet. The demonstrations. The performances - we always agreed that we wouldn’t play and that we’d come and support it all. I see it positively. In 1968, I was small then, I was ten years old. I remember exactly how we were in Dresden at the time, visiting some German friends. Because Mum had a lot of friends there from when she had been in Leipzig. She had studied there, I have some photos at home of a black girl and even one of her on skis. I hadn’t thought that Mum had ever been on skis. Maybe they had just stood her there, I don’t know. Then one next to a motorbike, that was a great one. So we were there, I remember, and they rushed up and started going on about something that was happening in Prague. We didn’t know what they were talking about; and they kept playing the radio. I can see the big bed and us all there, Dad, Mum and my brother. We listened to what went on, Mum translated it, and we couldn’t go back to Prague because they’d closed the borders or something. I know that I was late to school, that I wasn’t there on the 1st of September [the first day of the school year - transl.], I didn’t come until a week later or so. So that’s how I saw it then. When we did return home - we lived in Hadovka, no actually in Dejvice [a district of Prague - transl.], near the airport - there were tanks passing by. I was frightened, that I was. I was frightened because I had it a long way to school. And the tanks were all over the place.”