Milan Zapadlo

"Well, we got information in Prague about a lady whose husband posted the Charter 77 statement here on a public billboard on Fügnerka. And they caught him doing it and he was sentenced to about five years in prison I think. And this lady was with her children without any financial support. So in Prague they asked us, if we would give her some money. I went to Jirka Dienstbier asking for the money; Jirka Kasal was also there. And then, when we came back, it was the first time what did I see the foreign currency, the money. And then we visited this lady because she got a warning from the state police that if she said anything, the children would get killed. So she was very scared and we waited until dark. We told her they just went to knock on the window, and when we handed her the money, as we didn't know if she was being watched. I don't remember her name anymore."

"Then I still remember Jan Palach. When he burned himself, all the sirens in the entire state were turned on, cars stopped, everyone pressing their car horns. We were standing in the classroom, I was the only one crying, the teacher stroked my head. And I felt terribly sorry that such a young person could do something like that only to wake up the whole nation."

"And it was interesting - they noticed that the public lighting was turned off. Well, suddenly a couple of young men rushed out of the darkness and just started beating them. They threw Tudor over the railing into the Kateřinský brook, and they kicked Jirka Kasal in such a way that they actually broke his rib. And he somehow, I don't remember the exact details, but somehow he got home, they called an ambulance, which took him to the hospital. But before the treatment took place, the police were already there and said that they were going to take this man in for questioning, that they must find out, what was actually going on. The doctor somehow objected: 'Look, I'm a doctor and I have to treat him first.' They said to him: 'You will not tell us what we can and cannot do!' So they put him in a car, took him to Pastýřská for questioning and then kicked him out on the street and told him to go to the hospital himself."

"Early in the morning, my mother woke us up, crying and saying that they are occupying us, that the Russians are occupying us. And now we didn't know - I actually hardly knew the word. The image of the Russians that we used to paint with a red star at school; those tanks, blooming lilacs, and suddenly all this."