Rudolf Bereza

“When Pavel Wonka died, I wrote this letter to Gustáv Husák. After Wonka’s death Husák awarded the Order of Labor by the Minister of Justice Kašpar. When Šavrda, for instance, was in prison, and the prison doctor confirmed that he was suffering from six diseases which threatened his life, he was still made to serve his sentence to the end. In the letter I reminded Husák that when he had been in prison, he had written about how he saw the design on the carpet moving through blood, which means that he was tortured and everything in front of his eyes was blurred. I wrote to him: ´You were not tortured by the Nazis, but by the Communists.´ That’s what I wrote in the final part of my letter. I sent this letter to him. Naturally, its content was broadcast on Radio Free Europe and Voice of America the day after. All of it, including my address. And so the next morning when I came to work, my colleagues greeted me: ´We’ve already heard it.´ Those were the activities which we did.”

“We hadn't known that the Poles had it organized so well, ensuring that nobody would be watching the area. I went there by car with Tomáš Hradilek. With difficulties I drove from Lipník to Samotišky under Svatý Kopeček. I picked Hradilek up there, and we rode together. We arrived at the railway station in Javorník, which was the meeting point for all. Havel arrived there, then Dienstbier, Vohryzek, who was the Charter’s spokesman at the time, and others: Battěk, Petr Uhl. We drove to the mountain and from there we walked uphill. I had a beautiful colorful jacket, but I decided not to wear it that day. Also, I didn't take anything to drink with me, because I was afraid the bottles would be rattling as I walked. I thought that we would have to crawl somewhere between the boundary stones, and I had the idea that I needed to be as inconspicuous as possible. Therefore I wore a green jacket. We climbed up to the top, and there was Anna Šabatová with Jacek Kuroň, and she announced: ´Rudolf Bereza is coming.´ Jacek Kuroň, a bottle in his hand, began shouting: ´Heeeey, Rudolf, helloooo there!´ I said: ´You’re all shouting here as if you were in a football stadium.´ He told me: ´There are no cops within a hundred kilometers from here.´ He offered me a drink. I said: ´I can't drink, I’m driving.´ He seemed surprised: ´What? We were driven here.´ They had it really organized so well. That was our meeting at the Borůvková hora (Blueberry Mountain).”

“After the arrival of the Soviet army I began to be involved very actively. I wrote protest signs on fences, roads, everywhere. We pulled pranks like releasing water from their water storage tanks and such. In November, when they celebrated the October revolution in Jeseník, and they walked downhill to the market square – there were back alleys there, and we – I don’t want to boast about it, because it was rather nasty – we had persuaded one guy, who was willing to remove the chain from his bike and ride downhill at full speed into that bunch of Russians. He knocked down several of them. He was speeding from the hill and shouting: ´Watch out! Watch out!´ They had no clue what was going on. Nobody stepped aside. He simply ran into them on his bike. We had promised him something in return if he really did it. That was one of the things we organized.”

“I arrived to the airport in Olomouc, and I was probably lucky that our soldiers stopped me and warned me: ´Don’t go there, please.´ The reason was that there were Russians on the road leading to the airport and they were stopping cars and stealing petrol, photo cameras, sweaters and food from the people. They took everything from the cars. As I stood there for a while I saw some drivers coming back, families returning from there in their cars. The women were crying, because everything was stolen from them. The Russians left a bit of petrol in the cars, but they took everything else. They stole things. Such was the situation two or three days after the occupation. I saw this in Opava, in Olomouc, in Šumperk and in Brno. I saw the genuine reactions of the public. Whenever bad times come, the nation unites and resists.”