Zdeněk Rybka

“When our leaders were taken to Moscow their return was just terrible. I also gave in to mob mentality and felt sorry for them even though they betrayed us. They were all cowards, with the exception of František Kriegel, who has been largely forgotten. Ask people in the street who Kriegel was. Some might remember. Normalizace (rollback of reforms after 1968) was dished out slice by slice like salami.

“My wife had a job and she also took care of me. I focused on my job performance. Unfortunately, our family is obsessed with work. My mom had a fast food eatery for students. There were many other eateries and mom had to be the best, always. She was obsessed. What else can I add? I can show you documents from my 20 years of work at a bank as a branch manager. It was very difficult for me to bear when our branch was not assessed to be the best in the country during annual evaluations. This is not the right way to go, I cannot recommend this approach to anybody.”

“In Zálešná where we lived there was still combat. We snuck out to the town square where the victory celebrations were already under way. There was music and Czechoslovak flags. Later, we would take cover with our parents in the cellar and told them that Russian soldiers liberated the town square. Later, it was said that Romanian units were the main liberators. Romanians have graves here, but we saw only Russians. When the Russians took over the whole town, we invited soldiers to our home and they were Russian. They were not Romanian even though Romanian units liberated some parts of the city. Even after the whole town of Zlín was freed, there was artillery bombardment of the surrounding hills. We tried to help out by carrying howitzer ammunition. That’s what the war was like.”