Hana Plicková

"In college, my friend and I went to a concert in Karlovy Vary. It was a concert of the band named Pražský výběr. At that time this particular band bothered them as their singer was Mr. Kocáb. I don't know how this music could have been toxic when it was just music for young people, classical rock. Well, that time we went to Karlovy Vary with that friend. Well, when the concert ended, we went [with the others] to the station and back to school in Ústí nad Labem. And at that moment they let us get on that train and really surrounded every entrance, just so that no one could get out, so people from the police... and they were there with dogs. This means that no one can escape from that train. With the fact that they went wagon after wagon and asked us to show our IDs. Back then, there was no way anyone could get out without an ID card. That means we had to have it, it was simply a crime to go out without any ID. So they legitimized us and I remember and it made me sad at the time that they wanted to know who was at that concert. And with the fact that, of course, I was in college, when they did it, they said that we would have problems at school. And that one girl, a stranger, who was in that wagon, said: 'I won't give you the ID card, I don't have it.' And the policeman began to cry at her loudly. ' Why are you yelling at her, what are you doing?' And he said to her: 'You cow, stupid cow, what are you doing here...!' And he took her by the hair, they pulled her out of that wagon, and there they threatened her he'll beat her up if she didn't shut up. And if she didn't like it, she could go to jail too, and so on. And of course she would have problems at school and the so on and so forth. So I remember that to this day and it was something terrible, because I thought to myself, we are going out to get culture, to listen to a concert, and it is, as I say, for them it was something like anti-state. They just treated us that way, and we were mostly young people that means around fifteen years old, I don't know, just normal young people who were just looking for culture."

„At that time, I was with my grandmother. It was in Dolní Jiřetín, that town, the town, no longer exists today, because today they are mines, the mines got priority. And we were there with my brother, who is seven years older. And I remember it because it was quite a shock. Grandma woke us up in the early, early hours of the morning, around four o'clock in the morning, saying, 'Children, hold on, there's going to be a war.' She had a huge fear in her eyes. And then I know I felt sorry for her because she almost cried. And we went to look out the window and grandma said she was scared because she didn't know what was going on. And one tank after another drove down the road. And when I looked at the sky, it was like blowing up a dandelion, there were a lot of parachutists, just a lot of parachutes. The sky was really covered with them, so it was quite the experience of the day, you might say.“