Ing. Jan Mandelík

"One day, I was doing some digging in the garden, it was quite warm, and I suddenly remembered that it was Palach's anniversary. Like his suicide. And I just felt sorry for him, and the snowdrops were already sprouting. And I picked a bouquet of snowdrops and I went home, and so Dagmara dropped everything, and we got in the Trabant and drove to Všetaty to bring Palach a candle and the snowdrops. And we got there, and there were two cemeteries, one under the road and one above the road, but we didn't know... We knew he was moved to Všetaty. They reported it on Voice of America or somewhere. And so we simply went under the road, and some lady was cleaning a gravestone there. And we said, 'Where is Palach's grave here?' And she said, 'That's above the road, you have to go to the other cemetery. But it's full of policemen. Don't go there. You'll have terrible trouble.' I said, 'I can tell they're policemen, so what? I'm only going to lay a flower there.' So we went there, laid the flower, and wanted to light the candle. All of a sudden, this guy came up to us, picked it up and took it to some container and threw it in there. He told us that this was not allowed and to show him our ID cards."

"My father wrote to me afterwards [after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops]: 'Don't come back, it's not worth it.' But I came back and finished my studies. My mother, she was glad. I didn't finish... My mother would write: 'We painted your bedroom,' and so on. She didn't write, 'Come back,' but I could kind of tell she'd be happy if I came back. But that's not why I did it. I couldn't say that. I started smoking and lost about 15 kilos before I decided what to do. And finally, I made the decision all at once. I bought the plane tickets and left everything there, even the clothes and everything. I actually ran away from there because I knew that my relatives–in a good way–wouldn't want to let me go. They would be so sad to see me leave. So I just packed up and went back. And when I got home, my parents stared at me, surprised that I was back."