Jiří Antonů

“From Wednesday it took place more in the club. It was still under the heading of the Czechoslovak Union of Youth, so they had some office space there. They even tried to set up a discussion there and even Communist Party representatives came. Back then people already had a bit of… it was calm, but people absolutely didn’t trust them anymore. They kept trying to lie their way out of it, it was an open discussion, the hall packed and airless and you could feel the mistrust of the people. People were not scared anymore. At one point when they said: ‘We will discuss this later,’ I replied: ‘Well that is if somebody wants to discuss it with you.’ And a former colleague of mine said: ‘Ease up, ease up.’ He was still afraid. He thought I was being too revolutionary. He couldn’t imagine that we could do something without them, without their consent. With their consent yes, but without them altogether… But some of us others had already felt different.”

„I remember exactly what happened on November 17. We had all lived our lives somehow and only later got to know stuff. So, I was here around the corner in the then hotel Beseda, where there was a youth club and in it, on the first floor, a wonderful performance of brothers Justovi was taking place. You could feel… not really a revolutionary mood, but they already could dare to do and say more in the performance than ever before. I later met with the Just brothers, we were remembering the times and they recalled the show very well because it was the last one they ever did. Then there was the strike, theatres were closed, they didn’t travel at all, the Velvet Revolution came and they said that for a long time this was their last performance, which is why they remembered the amazing atmosphere of it, that you could already feel the change in the audience.“