“Jeez, they were such good company. I remember Zdenek Dyk, he was there for about six years, he was a bit out of sorts because he was a notorious alcoholic. He was the first philosopher as part of the first movement, who went to the Prague Castle to demonstrate. They were the very first to go to the Castle to demonstrate. So they locked them up right away, some were sent to join the PTPs and had to stay until further notice. So Zdenek had been part of the PTPs for the fifth or sixth year. During my second year there, Čepička left office and Lomský stepped in, so all the old PTPs were released into civilian life and we were made into technical battalions. That's what the 'black barons' were, they weren't the usual PTPs anymore, they were technical battalions, but it was the same thing really. As the general said, the PTPs are there so that when a stream needs to be crossed, they take off their helmets, climb into the stream, and combat units pass over their heads."
"In August 1968, I made posters against the Russians together with the artist Vašek Kus. We painted different ones, like 'You've been captured, you're going to die...', 'Go home, Ivan'... and stuff like that. And students from the Faculty of Education took them and distributed them around Ústí. I was there when we set fire to a Russian car. That was when we had won an ice-hockey match, I don't remember if it was the first or the second game. And everyone met up on the Špitálský square. There was some Russian garrison or commander, who lived there somewhere. And the Russian commander came to congratulate us on the victory, so we booed him. Then a tank rolled up onto the square, so someone set it on fire, and so we set fire to a Russian car."
"Suddenly it was here again, that blanket that covered everything. Suddenly it was known that nothing could be said freely. Various things suddenly disappeared. The worst part was that we all thought it would last forever. No one believed that anything could change, it was all happening for the second time. It was all written in stone this time, in such a cruel way. After all, the Soviet Army was obviously going to last forever. It was also being said: What does forever mean? Those were three forevers, and so it was all a bit hopeless, but one doesn't stop living because of that, right? Nobody was committing suicide, or maybe there were some, but I don't know of them, as it wasn't allowed to talk about them anymore. Suddenly, you were reading the same newspapers, the same nonsense as before January 1968. Although I must say, under Novotný it seemed that things would gradually improve. There was the Writers' Union, where suddenly everyone had their say and so on, which was then gone. That kind of development towards freedom was suddenly gone again. And the worst thing about it was that it was so timeless, lacking any perspective, well, it was like a blanket."
"It was nice... there was a party leader, some Novák, an engineer or a doctor, because he had that RSDr (Doctor of Social and Political Sciences) title. He was a doctor from birth thanks to his parents and he had gone to the Sorbonne in Vokovice (The University of the Czechoslovak Communist Party). He was watching out and checking who would embezzle, because they (the communists) thought that you could still stop it all. And the boys from the Faculty of Education came to agitate. And that Novák guy was telling them something and one of the lads, I liked him, asked him: 'Who are you?' And that Novák told him: 'I am the chairman of the party here.' And the lad said: ‘Look, I’ll come back here in a week and I will still be here, but you won’t be here anymore!’ I really liked that conversation back then."
Zdeněk Urban was born into the mixed family of Alois and Kateřina Helena on February 18, 1935 in Litoměřice. When he was two years old, his father was transferred as an army officer to Jičín, so he and his mother followed him. As soon as the Second World War began, his father was labeled an enemy of the Reich and sentenced to ten years in prison. In 1945, his father returned from the camp with the Western troops and took up command of a garrison in Trutnov. After the communist coup in February 1948, his father was fired from the army and imprisoned yet again. After his release from prison in 1952, his rank was restored and he was sent into the military reserve force. He made a living, for example, as a pig feeder or a paper mill worker. Meanwhile, Zdeněk Urban graduated from the High School of Applied Arts in Turnov and began his studies at university in Prague. But because of being labeled the son of a class enemy, he was dispelled from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) and was sent to military service. He was transferred to the technical auxiliary battalion (PTP – Pomocný technický prapor in Czech), the so-called PTPs where he served sixteen months. Then he joined the company Setuza in Ústí nad Labem as a designer in their marketing department. He worked there until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. After that he made a living as a freelance artist. At the time of the interview in 2022, the witness was living in Ústí nad Labem. Zdeněk Urban died in 2023.
