Ivan Hupka

“So we told ourselves that it wouldn’t have been wise to notify our parents or acquaintances about our departure. I met my sister at the tram station in front of Slovan. She got off the tram and I gave her some personal things which I wanted to send to my mother. At that moment I knew it was the last time I saw her but I couldn’t tell her anything.”

“As for the censorship, it was hidden somewhere at the back of our minds. We were really careful about it. We knew what we could afford if we wanted to see it on the screen. Sure. If we had told too much or if something had been overstated, we could have been sure that the press supervision would have stopped it. I could say that no reprisals arouse from it, when they told: ‘I don’t want this here or adapt it somehow, or this should be edited.’ Sure. We did it but it was always the result of some agreement or discussion. Of course, if something was approved and if it was something new or fearlessly spoken, there was a great joy among editors. They usually told: ‘Wow, he could get away with it! It was really well done!’ So we had to think up not only the best material for our news, but also the way of its processing to make it acceptable.”

“The welcoming was really great. There were many people, just like some delegation, and they welcomed us as if we were some precious visitors. There were about twenty people. They came to Vienna. People of various ages came there, from the oldest to the youngest ones. So during the whole month we spent here, we were just moving from embrace to embrace. Actually it is still the same, it happens again every year when we are here.”

“That period of time caught us in Bratislava. We went in the morning, just like my wife, Marienka, told you, we got up at five when we came to know what had happened there, that military troops arrived to Bratislava during the night. We found it out only in the morning. Thus we went downtown because we lived near the Holy Trinity Church under the Michael’s Gate. And there happened that incident with an army tank, etc. However, there is one thing I will never forget about. We were standing near Tatra where our studio or rather the whole television was located at that time. And when they opened fire on that church, the square was crowded, you know, there were thousands of people, so we could hardly walk among them. And when that firing had started everybody fell down. On the ground. It was a real humiliation.”