Jan Sladký

"On the day of the massacre on Národní třída, we performed a play by Voskovec and Werich called Pěst na oko (Fist on the Eye). I know because I was directing and we made fun of police batons. I was reviewing it at about nine o'clock pm... and we had no idea of what was going on in Národní. I know a colleague went home after the show to get something; a debrief of the show would follow. She came back and said, '[my husband] Zdeněk heard on Radio Free Europe that there was some big mess going on in Prague.' We thought it was good. The next day, a student troupe from Liberec played here led by the director of the Liberec theatre, and he had been through the violence. He first talked about what happened in Prague, how they were being pressed there and that he escaped through a cracked shop window. He was very emotional. We said, 'He'll go to prison, he must've gone crazy.' He was a direct participant in the Národní třída violence. He said he was glad he got out of there. So we had this news. Then buzz started because there was a jury and one of the jurors was Dr. Sokol, the former director of Ypsilonka and the Naive Theatre. They had already started making phone calls, arranging the strike. We didn't know that, but I know that when was saying goodbye he said, 'Well, keep your fingers crossed for us,' and we didn't know what for. They already knew they were going on strike."

"I remember that exactly, because they crossed over in Hrádek at 10:30 in the evening of 20 August. Those were the first ever troops crossing into our country. I know [the film] 'The River Magic' was on TV that night, and as we were right on the border, we thought 'Damn, they're harvesting crops'; that's what it sounded like over from Germany. But it was tanks already rolling to the border. A factory director lived upstairs; and all of a sudden I hear his radio go loud and announce that we were invaded by the Warsaw Pact. We turned on the radio too and started waking up, living in a block of flats at that time. Then we fell asleep and I thought I had been dreaming the next morning. I woke up and there were these heavy bombers flying over Hrádek. We went to the factory but of course we weren't working and a meeting was held; guys would stay in the factory over 24 hours and so on. There was no sign of anybody breaking into the factory. We said we had to do something against this. They started printing leaflets, sealing them in jars and throwing them into the Nisa. It flows into Germany, and it was meant to let them know what was going on. Then we - and we were probably very stupid - put a sign on the barrier telling them to get the hell out. It was in Russian and Polish because it was on the Polish, not German border. They watched us through their gun sights. We thought we'd jump into a ditch if they started firing, but a bullet is faster than the sound. We know nowadays. This is what we did, and it all added up up for us later during the normalisation period. They remembered very well who did what. We tried all that, but it was no use anyway. There's another piece of information I had, I don't know if it's true. Allegedly, an armoured train was ready in Zittau. There was a sand quarry in Hrádek, supplying sand to construction sites all over the country. They said there were eight loaded cars ready. One weighed twenty tons, and since the tracks to Germany go downhill, the idea was to release those cars and let them go hit the armoured train if it approached. Maybe it's a rumour, but that's the way I heard it."