Stanislav Frank

"Once I was assigned. A Soviet delegation came there to visit, and because they were lawyers, they told me: 'You will go there with the cadre comrade Řezáč and the comrade Papež and simply with the comrades you will give them your attention, because they are lawyers, if they wanted to know something about the law.' And so he came with us to the red corner. There were our comrades there, basically millionaires and very sharp Stalinists, because there were quite a lot of them in the brewery. And they started throwing down shots of vodka and stakan Russian-style. They even made the Russians, who were somewhat cultured in comparison with them, to drink as well. And so I just sat there like that. I was extremely annoyed and it had to emanate from me, because I just was not talking. I did not sing Russian folk songs with them. The Russians did not ask about anything. And so I did not say anything. I did not say anything to anyone. I did not join in on their fun. I simply suffered there. When it finally ended after about an hour and a half, then one Russian came up to me to say goodbye and he uttered a single word: 'Izvinite.' I do not know, if he was apologizing for those comrades of ours. I rather interpreted it that he was apologizing for the occupation, which was back then still... At least I told myself it was like that. He apologized for something, which they had done to us."

"We were on holiday in the German Democratic Republic in eastern Germany. We returned just before that 21st of August. There were road bypasses everywhere, we were going back by car at night. Everywhere there were road bypasses. At the Umleitung [German for bypass] we could see tanks and soldiers, and so we were asking ourselves: 'What is happening? What is happening?' Or our parents were asking themselves anyway. We came home. They left me in Bernartice and drove to Plzeň. And that is when it started actually. Mother remained with us in Bernartice and in the morning, as I was getting up, on that twenty-first of August, there stood grandma and grandpa and mother at the radio. They were listening to the broadcasting about the occupiers coming in and they were all crying of course. Grandpa with grandma, who had experienced the war, were basically terrified of something similar, terrible, happening."