Jan Sláma

"First of all, the National Museum that still had visible remains of gunshots on it was in front of our eyes at all times. This somehow kept everyone who was involved aware of possible danger. I remember that an Aeroflot office was destroyed, that the demonstrators somehow managed to destroy it. I didn't take part in it. I remember the police with their white helmets ready in the adjacent streets and us on Wenceslas Square and all those... and in those streets there were these water trucks; all ready and lined with a cadre of some working-class people, soldiers and militiamen. Then after a while they pulled out the trucks and started spraying, people were retreating and disappearing."

"During the years when the rules were more relaxed, we met an Englishman, Paul Oestreicher, who used to come to Prague every now and then. Once, he took us to Iona, in 1968. He was to give a lecture on how he had... how he felt optimistic about developments in the East. But then on Wednesday morning he was banging on our door and saying, 'There are Russians in Prague.' He hitchhiked to London and we followed him by train. Our eldest son had stayed here in Prague with friends. Paul Oestreicher offered that he would arrange everything for us in case we wanted to emigrate. But we said no, we didn't want to, and we came back. The reason was mainly that we had our eldest son here, and secondly we just somehow didn't think emigration was the right solution."