Jan Bartoš

“The time of my youth was nice, and I remember that my dad, when he came here after the war, he bought a gun, and he then sold it in accordance with the law. As a child, I remember that until 1953, a policeman was coming to check my dad if he still had the gun. Dad became a bit nervous as a result of it. If you remember the terrible 1950s, one did not know when something would happen.”

“Meanwhile, I also learned that another friend of mine, Zdeněk, with whom I had been in the Kasino restaurant in the Liberec Exhibition Grounds the day before, was shot down from the scaffolding which was erected at the Town Hall while he was taking pictures from there. What was strange was that the metal pipes had been shot through as well. On one side there was a clear bullet entry hole and the pipe was smashed terribly from the other side, so they had to use bullets that caused some really devastating wounds.”

“In the 1969, I was surprised because I just got back (from Austria, ed.), that the police, the military and other forces were against protesters. I participated in the demonstration quite actively, I will not go into detail, but there were cobblestones flying on both sides, and so on. I was there when someone smashed the Baťa shop window and the policemen were taking shoes from the shop for themselves. In the evening we were still in the city, the city center then became surrounded by the military, the police, the militia and so on. In Fügnerova Street, I managed to run between soldiers who let me go home. Later I found out that some of my friends got caught, and some of them spent two months in Pastýřská Street. I even found out that my friend's brother was on his way to home from his work, he worked on the railway, and they arrested him, too, and investigated him.”

“In the evening I felt that something was happening - you did not learn much from the radio - in the morning I woke up and my dad told me: ´The Russians are occupying us.´ I said that it was not possible. At that time, democracy began to show up a bit - I say a bit, because it was not so "bad" - I could not believe it. So I went to work, clocked in my arrival time, and after a few minutes I went away with some colleagues. To be specific, I went with Jindra Kubiš. We walked towards Beneš Square. There we split up, I got hungry and went home to get my camera. When I returned, I went up Ludmila Street, present-day Palach Street, and people were running down and they were all saying: ´There is shooting at the town hall, do not go there!´ Thus I did not go there, but when the shooting stopped, I did, and there was blood at the spot where Jindra had been standing at the time of the shooting, and someone has already brought flowers there. Then I learnt that Jindra had been shot through with bullets so that he died in the hospital due to the injury sustained to his lungs, perhaps heart, and so on. The wounds were not compatible with life. His identity card was displayed there and it was marked with bullet shots; it touched me a lot.”