Karel Polanský

“I wanted to get somewhere to Příkopy [Na příkopě Street - trans.] via Old Town Square. But I found myself in Železná Street and saw that it was blocked by the militia. There weren’t many people there, mostly in the background. I reckoned nothing bad could happen, so I’ll just ask if they’ll let me pass through. When he saw I had the tricolour and a black band, he immediately asked where I was going, and he demanded to see my ID card. I didn’t have it, so I started to back out, but he was faster. He caught me, he was bigger than me, some 185 centimetres or so, a bulky fellow, a kind of daddy militiaman. He gave one to remember and then passed me on to his mates. They took me to the Party’s municipal committee. There were others sitting on the bench, who’d been detained as I was. I realised that the cage was closing. That it wasn’t the kind of demonstration that I could come home from, like in 1968, but that there could be consequences from it. And so I asked myself if there was any point? Perhaps it was cowardice speaking in me. I don’t know, but I took the tricolour and the black thing, so they wouldn’t have any evidence, and I threw them under the bench. Later, when the cops questioned me, I claimed, which was true, that I was on my way to Tuzex [a shop with foreign goods - trans.] to buy some tobacco. I had two bons [voucher] in my purse, that was how much it cost at the time. Later, when I was in Ruzyně, they asked: ‘Didn’t you read any newspapers?’ And I said that I wasn’t interested in that kind of thing.”

“Later on I really was charged with paragraph 202. I found a lawyer who was sympathetic to my situation; he knew what it was really about, of course. The trial took place sometime in spring. In the meantime I was sent from Žilina to Holešov, where I remained for the rest of my military service. So, my trial took place sometime in February. I was very lucky that the only witness, the militiaman who caught me, was nowhere to be found. He probably knew it would have been quite unpleasant for him; so he just couldn’t be found. I said: ‘Why should you try me? Why me? There was a number of other people there, I didn’t participate in anything. I just happened to be walking by.’ They had no choice - it would’ve probably been a different matter in the fifties - they drop the charge, and so that’s how it ended.”