Ivo Valent

“Mum told us that when she got inside Parliament, the MPs held a chaotic session there for some time. When the soldiers arrived, the situation got much more dramatic. She said she remembered seeing Marie Kabrhelová crying in the toilets because she couldn’t understand how our brothers could do something like that to us. She was a Communist who was convinced of the friendly relations between the Soviet people and us, so she couldn’t understand what was happening. That was the source of her disillusionment. I remember that Mum told me that she also saw an MP tell one of the soldiers there that he could be her son. They had orders to quell the counter-revolution. When they saw what was going on here, I guess it caused them some embarrassment. But they had to fulfil their orders, of course. I myself served in the army for two years, and seeing that I spent my second year right near the borders, in Aš, I can’t imagine stopping someone who wanted to cross the borders. That would be terrible trouble, and I’d get myself in a real stew.”

“After about three days Mum finally got out of Parliament, when the soldiers received orders not to keep them there any longer. She said she was joined in the street by some men who then offered that, if she wanted, they could immediately arrange her emigration to the United States. Of course, I don’t know if it was a form of provocation, if those weren’t perhaps State Security officers, or if they meant it seriously. But what is clear is that Mum had her family here and her own mother, who was hard of hearing and very ill. So she immediately refused. The matter petered out. Her staying here meant that she and my father bore the consequences of their decision not to sign their agreement with the occupation.”