Pavel Lagner

“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.”

“I never learnt the actual reason and I never found out why it was me that they were interested in, because I think that I was not exceptional in any way, I did not make my opinions known loudly, I had never, until studying at DAMU, signed anything, no declarations or anything, I think I was just a normal, regular kind of person who just went to church regularly and wasn’t a member of the SSM. But there had to be thousands, tens of thousands of people like that. And in 1990 I thought I would go to Pardubice or wherever it was, I don’t know, but I wanted to go have a look in the archives to find out. But then I changed my mind and told myself that I didn’t actually want to know because I didn’t want to learn names that could possibly hurt me a lot and that perhaps they were until this day, those people, among my friends, and I didn’t want to, if it was, maybe not, but if it was one of my friends, and they still were a friend to me at the time, I didn’t want to lose them. Because that, the pressure afterwards, the… the weekly interrogations were so awful that if someone gave in to them, I already forgave them a long time ago because if it had gone on longer, I would’ve given in as well. You can’t withstand a thing like that.”