Dagmar Bláhová

“After there was the Charter, we were discussing what we should do. They wanted us all to sign the Anti-Charter. Not a chance. No one did! It was in the papers recently, that we were the only ones who refused. After that, they were forcing us to join the Communist Party. After we were taken over by the Brno State Theatre. We said: 'But we weren't even in the Socialist Youth. Let us establish a Socialist Youth cell first.' So we established our Socialist Youth cell. Kocourek, the strongman, had been serving as a treasurer I think. All his life, he couldn't save a penny, he had always been broke. I was a librarian. We had no books. But we would write reports from our meetings. Those clowns! But this was the only way. There wasn't any other. So we didn't have to join the Party.”

“I remember that as we would go from Hradební Street, through the back, through Haštalská Street, we would pass Hotel Haštal where those Russian soldiers had been accommodated, young men, all of them. So we would go there, why would no one shoot me I no wonder, and we would yell at them in broken Russian, asking them what they were doing there. They had no idea where they were. They would just stand there like a bunch of blockheads. And once, their commander came, with stars, and told us to leave immediately. The soldiers were just standing in front of the hotel, in the evening they would screen their Russian war movies right in the street. It was just unbelievable. They were issued some newspapers and we kept bringing them leaflets, so they could find out what they did, where they were and why.”

“On 21 August we were climbing the stairs to Sacré-Coeur and all of a sudden I heard the Czech anthem from a window. 'That's weird, that's really weird, we better hurry to the news stands.' We didn't speak French, just some broken English. We wanted to cross the Channel by boat, to England. And now I see this title 'Prague has been occupied.' Again, the hair on my back would stand up, if there was any left. I remembered how I almost passed out. We rushed to the Czech embassy. There were people crying, yelling that their children were in the country. They were deciding if they would return. Absolute mayhem. Everyone wanted to know what was going on. It was just horrible, like if a war would break out, and in fact, it did.”