Václav Sokol

“Then I attended the primary school at St Margaret’s, it’s some kind of Anglo-German business academy now. And then we also went to church. As a boy I served at the altar for many years, so we spent a lot of time in the monastery garden, roasting potatoes, cooking soup... But then came the breakpoint, in 1948, when they locked up Opasek and evicted all the monks. We knew Opasek very well, he was one of my father’s friends, and I think that he baptised my brother. We liked him, he was kind and spontaneous, jolly, and I would say ‘unparsonlike’. We liked him, and suddenly one day at school they called us all to the gym hall, and our civic education teacher was telling us with an affected voice that weapons had been found in the premises and that those goody-goodies had been planning to kill us off, but that our vigilant police force had protected us. I knew from home that there was something odd going on, I couldn’t imagine it at all, it didn’t make sense. But on the other hand I was just a little boy, we had a nice teacher, and to a certain degree I trusted the school. I was brought up that way, and I couldn’t imagine that someone would lie to me.”

“Somehow I found myself in the centre of Prague, I could hear shooting, so I went to the Radio Building. There was a barricade there, a lorry stood crosswise and one tank was burning. The broadcast building was closed and some soldiers were trying to get inside from the side. And people were calling at those inside the building: They’re going at you from the side! And we stood there, and when the machine gun started firing, we legged it off up the street. It looked like the fighting was pretty tough there at the time.”