Lenka Šepsová

"I am here with Mila Vašina and I founded the Civic Forum with others and we were in the square every day. I remember that they then built a flatbed there for us so that we would be like upstairs. Then, over time, it probably had an extra sound; at the beginning it was of course without any sound. I remember the cops standing by the church that first or second day. I always told the man that there were dogs, he said he didn't remember. There were policemen in uniform, and of course there was a secret one among them, who were only in normal civilian clothes, but they listened to what people were saying. So we basically started a Civic Forum here with the others, and we were very active."

"I remember waking up on August 21st and my dad was sitting in the kitchen smoking his favorite cigarettes - I don't know if it was the brand Astra or something else, having tears in his eyes. We had the radio on, it was also called a wire radio at the time, it was such a box and it was distributed around every house by wire. It was possible to tune in only one station, there was no other. So he listened and there was a voice saying we were occupied by the Russians. I may have seen the first time my dad had tears in his eyes and cried. We went out right away, there were no phones, my mother and I went out to the supermarket and there were a lot of people there and they said what was going on, that they were being shot and that there would be no food and the like. No one in the Communist Party was with us, we perceived it terribly, especially my father, my parents and my relatives. I would not imagine that something like this could ever happen."