profesor Ján Zavarský

“They came at seven in the morning and took me by car to ‘Februárka’, which was the main StB (secret police in Czechoslovakia) office. They kept us there until the evening, until around eight or nine o’clock. They were pushing us around there. They put a stack of folders in front of me. I doubt all of them were about me, but they claimed that they had been following me all the time. They would ask me where I was at different times. When I told them that I do not remember, that they should help if they actually were following me so much, they would get very upset. The result was that they sent me a letter saying that I had to come to ‘Februárka’ and bring my passport for my own sake. When I went there, there was only one room with one table, one chair, and one official. I gave him my passport. He put it into the drawer and told me, ‘It is not your passport anymore. You will receive an official confirmation soon. Goodbye!’ And I did not have that passport for seven years.”

"President Svoboda said, ‘Stay wise like a statesman; we have been invaded.’ When we told that to the workers in the train who were sitting in a compartment next to us, they almost beat us up, saying we were provocateurs. Then they heard it live and they were scared. The train stopped for a few hours, then the Russian soldiers created a corridor, no one checked us. We continued by train towards Bratislava. There were tanks going beside us. The train stopped in Žilina but it did not continue, but somehow we came to Bratislava. I realized that a lot of people were talking to these Russian soldiers. Since we had spent two months in Russia, I knew Russian well. I could speak to them fluently. But after that experience, when you saw that university-educated people could be so indoctrinated, you would understand that talking to the Russian soldiers was completely senseless. Because it was not their fault; they did not know anything and actually it was completely useless.”