Jana Šmídová

"Anyway, I used to work those shifts [in the radio newsroom]. I still remember that around the nineteenth or twentieth of August [1968], when the negotiations in Čierna pri Čope took place, I was on duty, and the telegrams started coming in, saying that there were some troop movements and so on. It was getting serious. The regular editors stayed there, but I went home. And in the morning... Oh, we even went to a party. And within that company that had gathered there, a few people already knew it wasn't quite right. So we talked about it, and then I went home. In the morning, the phones started ringing very early, saying that we were being occupied, that the Warsaw Pact troops had invaded us. I was an idiot and said, 'I have to go to the radio immediately.' I walked down Vinohradská Street and that's where it was all happening in the morning, on the twenty-first of August. And I tried to get to the radio. Because I had to go to work, of course! I had a shift there, even though I was just an assistant. But it was no longer possible. There was a tank on fire. I remember some young boys had such bright ideas like they were going to ram the fuel tank with a cramp iron. They were just like the ones who are driving around Ukraine now. Because on the hull of that tank, there were these tanks, these barrels. And they were debating that the cramp iron could break through it. I was right in the pit, in the middle of what was happening there. There was a tank on fire. They started shooting. Then we ran away. Meanwhile, the buildings opposite the radio station were burning. I experienced it all first-hand. Then we went into some house on Balbín Street. Because even though we were very combative... When you hear shooting nearby... So we went to hide in that house. Something flew through the mezzanine there, too, and it whizzed quite fast."

"We got into that zone, it was pretty interesting there. There were all sorts of guys, dudes, probably top experts, who were guarding the place. We also saw Western car brands. There were, I think, some Americans there at the time. Now I'm talking about entering the zone, which was thirty kilometres long. We had to register there. We were given an escort from this team. I saw a lot. We had some dosimeters that were supposedly not functioning well. We were there for less than a day, so if I was affected, it was more by the experience. We were in Pripyat, the town. We saw the famous [Ferris] wheel. I even had a camera, so I took some pictures, and then they published it in the newspaper. But it was very foggy. The people who guided us were absolutely fantastic, they sensed what we wanted to see. But I had this itinerary... Then we went to see some old lady who lived there in these beautiful little houses, blue and green. So we visited these older people who were staying there who didn't want to leave their homes and their dead relatives in the cemeteries. We were in her living room. It was so tidy... She said, 'I haven't seen any people for so long...' We asked her how she was doing there. She said, 'It's so sad now in the fall, but in the summer, the grandkids come here and all that. I grow strawberries for them.' And we almost fainted."

"And then I went to Michal [Žantovský, then a Reuters reporter], whom I knew, and I said, 'But he's not dead. He's standing right here next to me.' And then Milan [husband] left with the boys. And I stayed there the whole evening. There were no communication sources. Coincidentally, there was another Martin Šmíd who studied matfyz [Mathematics and Physics - transl.], a classmate of my son's, but he lived in Beroun. I believe Benešov or Beroun. And someone had to go to Beroun to check if it wasn't him. His classmates went there by train. And this Martin Šmíd met them there in his pyjamas. He didn't know at all what was happening. It was piling up like a snowball. It was a long time ago. I have thought about it for a long time, we've all thought about it. The family, of course, was struck. I can't imagine if I hadn't known where he was... But he was at home with me the whole time. So we just watched as police of all kinds started to crowd around our house. They offered us security. There were state police, municipal police, and I don't know what, all of them in the Písecká Street where we lived. One forgets, that's true, but I have to say that after all that, I really know everything about it. We all testified many times. We testified at the commissions. And I still think we'll never know what really happened. If it was a series of crazy coincidences... And now, I'm getting to the important part. Martin was supposed to go with his Slovak friend to visit his grandmother in some village below the Tatras, where there was not only no telephone but perhaps no electricity either. Simply nowhere. He was supposed to be unreachable for four days. And later, we found out we had a tapped phone. That's the kind of card someone could play, that Ace."