Marián Sklenka

“There was one conference, where we – the editors – used to be invited. I always wanted to be everywhere, be well informed and there one man gave me a picture, ‘Mr. Editor, don’t be afraid! Just write it! I am supporting your articles! Just show the communists!’ I agreed and I also published the photograph with Andrej Hlinka being carried by students on their shoulders in front of the tribune. There were the celebrations of Pribina’s millennium or so. Thus I published this picture in Roľnícke noviny. God, what a turmoil it caused! Poor Dubček was just returning from Moscow, I think, and those fleabags waited him on the airport just to show him the newspaper. He said, ‘Calm down and do nothing.’ There was one Slovak general in Prague banging with his soldierly hat on the table in Parliament, ‘Again, we have here the fascists, Hlinkas’ people!’ Then the managing editor called me, ‘Maroš, what an idiot you are! What have you done?!’”

“On that day when I was planning to run away, since I was a responsible man, I brought money for war veterans to our savings bank, what used to be paid out back then. I took the money there in a bag and right that night I left. If I were a vagrant, I would have run away with that money, but I handed them in, kept only the bag, which my dad had to bring me to jail later on.”