Jan Pochman

"Yeah, I went to the demonstrations quite often. I attended one that actually had a bit of an overlap to this day, because it was a demonstration against the Blanka tunnel, but it was supposed to lead a little different way than it does now. He was supposed to lead through Stromovka. And it was supposed to lead partly on the surface and then to go underground.The tracing just looked a little different. And of course, people did not interfere with the decision-making processes at all, it was simply decided by the Communist Party or not by the Communist Party, but the planners somehow decided that it would be like this, and the public was not involved in the process at all, and there was one such recessionist organization called the Czech Children, and it held such a demonstration in Stromovka against the tunnel leading through Stromovka as a pity. And because there were few of us, there were about fifty people, it was not difficult for the police forces, which knew that this demonstration would take place, to somehow get rid of this group and actually arrest them all. Which happened to me, and I was arrested and interrogated. What I did there, why I was there. So I lied that I was there to walk in the park and I didn't want to have any problems, so I lied. Of course, they knew I was lying. So for the next interrogation, which they called me about fourteen days later, they wrote to me to take my passport with me. So I took it with me a little naively and they confiscated it from me and said that before the whole event was investigated thoroughly, they confiscated my passport so that I could not leave the republic. And since then, I actually had no passport."

"So how did you know in Palach's week when and where to go?" "Well, I think we were passing on such a whisper. I think someone found out on the radio, in Free Europe or in the Voice of America, and then people said it to each other. So it was just known."