Pavel Lagner

“There was pressure on us from the National Theatre, and, well, only the moment when, I didn’t realise for a long while, even though people had been shouting that there were police vans in the back, that from Národní třída, that it had been closed off, I didn’t realise for a long time what kind of trouble it actually was, I simply thought we would annoy the cops with their plexiglass… that we would ring our keys, sing the anthem, all that, and that we would just turn it around and go. And on the contrary I was actually surprised thanks to the fifteenth of November when they beat us up like dogs, that no one was doing anything on the seventeenth. For quite a while I thought that, and, well… suddenly there were voices that they were pushing us from behind, and when the pressure became unbearable we started running through the passage, right, and I thought I’d escape to Mikulandská street and that we’d squeeze through there unnoticed. Well, that didn’t work out. There they counted up everything, for everyone and added all the stuff that had happened before. Well. And at that point… the shock was even greater. That they didn’t let us leave on purpose. For me, that crossed the line so much for me, the protest was several times, it got this horrible so many times, I felt that it was gradually getting worse, that their, their fury was getting so intense that I thought it was borderline hysteria, I had no idea what to do, I was just so furious I felt like… crying, I sat down on the stairs of Slavia, the café Slavia, and there… some of my classmates showed up and I told them that I simply could not keep studying at DAMU under these circumstances.”

“I remember that as if it was yesterday. I was only ten or eleven years old but I remember because we did not go to school, mum didn’t want us to go there and gave them an excuse of some sort because police manoeuvres were taking place there and I remember the racket, the noise of those helicopters and motorcycles was so loud that even inside the flat it was unbearable. And I, and I think my brother too, we wanted to run over there to have a look but of course they didn’t allow us to go. So for the funeral… obviously we were not allowed there as boys, but I remember it because of the noise and because of how desperate our parents were, so unhappy about what had happened. And the fact that they even… they even didn’t let him be buried in peace. The hopelessness and anger of my parents, along with the noise, that was imprinted so deep into my memory that I truly still remember that funeral.”