Ing. Jiří Kolda

“I don’t know what was the name of the soldier. In 1990 I told my story to someone from the Institute of History, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. They told me to contact an editor of Izvestia, Šinkarjev. We had met. I told him in Russian what had happened to me and that I’d appreciate if he tried to find this Soviet soldier. That I’d like to talk to him on the phone. I suppose that he thought he shot me dead. And perhaps he was feeling guilty for the rest of the life since he knew that I didn’t attack him, that I had my arms lifted up. Him saying that I attacked him was his defense. He was simply scared. This Šinkarjev heard me out, nodded his head and did nothing. So I have no information about this soldier’s fate.”

“When he said: ‘Ruky věrch, suda, suda,’ I knew that I had to follow him. With my hands lifted high I walked towards him. He did an incredible mistake. Instead of walking behind me he was moving backwards in front of me. He walked through the door, missed another door and hit his back against a table in the office of the deputy. Since his finger was on the trigger with the gun unlocked, in cramp he fired an assault rifle burst from one and a half meters towards my heart. According to the traces and cartridges that were found, it was about fifteen or twenty bullets. I was extremely lucky because at the moment of being shot I was just passing through the door and in order to make it through with my hands lifted up I turned a little. So those shots entered my chest below the sternum but then got out again, even if missing the heart just by one centimeter. My rib was shattered. As I was falling I got hit by another shot in my arm, this has had health effects ever since. Obviously, I made a horrible roar because of the pain and the shock. I can confirm what they say about one’s whole life flashing backwards through one’s mind at such a moment. I lost my consciousness, fell on my knees, hit an office cabinet and thus regained consciousness. Apart from that I can say that death by gunshot can be fairly pleasant and painless; it is as if someone flicked you with a whip. An acute hit but there is no actual pain. Then I came around. Okay, I am alive. I put my hand in front of my mouth, trying to cough and to see whether there was blood in my mouth. I kept telling myself: they will leave, my father is a doctor, I will crawl towards the telephone and call for help. Then I heard another soldier rushing in, probably an officer. The Russian soldier realized his mistake so he said that I attacked him with a weapon. The officer put me down on the floor and started searching me through, asking about the weapon. Obviously, I had none. Then some medic arrived, saw me covered in blood, unzipped my jacket, saw my bloody t-shirt, zipped the jacket again and said that I was dead. But I wasn’t. I was shivering and asked for a blanket. They heard me communicate in Russian. Than the medic put his palm on my scapula and saw that it wasn’t bloody. Thus he realized it was a tangential wound. In about half an hour, someone came with a stetecher. They loaded me. I could see that is was just after 3:30 a.m.“