"I was at the cottage with a group of people and we were drinking and we didn't know anything was going on. It was only afterwards on Sunday night that the then education minister came out and said there was some kind of riot. But it was clear that something was happening, something was in the air and something was moving. So on Monday morning, interestingly enough, it came together in my office. My colleagues came in, whether it was Petr Čermák, Alois Kafka, Radek Janoušek, and we started saying that we can't leave it like this. In the afternoon after work, we went out and looked for someone who would be at the epicentre. And we found the guys in the bunker, where they were basically sitting and typing something into typewriters - hair halfway down their back and stuff like that. Among them was a friend of mine, a classmate from high school, Vláďa Pekuláš, and so we got together. 'We have to do something, it can't be done like this' And we started to meet."
"We had the wire on, did a quick round in the morning, and well, everyone was terrified of what was going on. And just before seven thirty, shots rang out from the town, ambulances came out, Russians were shooting people. They started bringing us stuff. That was my contact with war surgery, which we always laughed when we were taught it in the faculty, we didn't take it rather seriously. Here it was triaging the wounded and so on. It must have been a wonderful solidarity of patients leaving the hospital on crutches to free up beds for the wounded. The whole hospital ran to the surgery, they operated, and suddenly at half past ten the ambulances came out again. Well, that's the popular horror photo of the tank crashing into the arcade and showering people with it. More injuries. So that was basically the horrible experience we went through all at once."
"I personally took part in [the demonstration] before the presidential elections, when the main candidate was General Svoboda. And we students, about ten thousand of us, marched through Prague chanting, 'We don't want Svoboda, we want Císař!' What was fascinating about Svoboda was that the communists had arrested him, and yet he believed in the system. Well, let's face it, it was true, Svoboda won. And then I have a memory of him, when I was already in Liberec in the surgery, the then president came with his wife, they had a cottage up in Bedřichov, he came to the hospital, he had a broken arm. And a wonderful orderly, Mr. Pluhar, if I may name him, who was a really nice guy, when the president shook his hand, he didn't wash his hand for a week, because it was a great experience for him."
Přemysl Sobotka was born on 18 May 1944 in Mladá Boleslav, but from 1945 he lived with his family in Liberec. After finishing primary school he entered an eleven-year high school, which later reformed into a general education high school (similar to today’s gymnasium). After graduating in 1962, he began studying general medicine at Charles University. In July 1968 he graduated and joined the surgical department of the Liberec hospital, where he lived through the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops and cared for the wounded. In September 1968, he began a year of military service in Stráž pod Ralskem, from where he later moved to the village of Hrdly in Litoměřice. Before the fall of the regime, he studied for two years at the Evening University of Marxism-Leninism (VUML). After 17 November 1989, he founded the local Civic Forum with his colleagues, participated in demonstrations, and was involved in the general strike. From 1991 he worked as the head of radiology in Liberec. In 1990-1996 he held the position of city councillor. In 1991, he participated in the founding of the Liberec Civic Democratic Party (ODS). From 1996 to 2016, he was a senator, and from 2004 to 2010 he was the chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. He ran unsuccessfully for ODS in the 2013 presidential elections. He also served as a deputy of the Liberec Region and Deputy Governor for Health. In 2024 he lived in Liberec.
