János Kokes

„With my colleagues, a Yugoslavian and a Bulgarian reporter, we went to the city centre in the evening. We got past all the cordons with facultative checks of documents all the way in front of the building of the party central committee. It was said that Ceaușescu was inside. The surroundings was barricaded with tanks. When we were returning home after nine in the evening, a commanding officer ordered us to go away as there will be shooting. I went home to get my typewriter ready and call Prague to get ready too. I lived nearby and from my balcony on the third floor I saw a highly lit up space, much more intense than other times. Then all the lights shut down and a shooting with lighting bullets began. A terrible feeling. Massive screaming of people, a chaos began. I reported to go to the site and ran downstairs. There was much shooting. Cordons didn’t let us pass. Inside there were burning tanks and barricades. At the entrance to the metro, under the national theatre, there were the Securitate units hiding, which demonstrates were not aware of. Forty seven people were massacred there on a space of 200 x 200 metres. That is already a massacre! I met my study class mate, we wanted to get around it and get there from the other side, but we had no clue it was all sieged. Just a few steps from us a Securitate unit wearing helmets was destroying the window screens to make it look like the vandals did. When they noticed us, we ran away and hid in a tunnel. I don’t remember exactly where, just know we ran fast. They were showing us the people they shot, I was noting down the data from their id card, then I helped carrying a man from Ploješt. I talked to young boys from the Factory of August 23, that they barricaded them inside, both the afternoon and night shifts and did not let them go out. Later it was proved, that most people were not shot by snipers nor the cordon units, but from immediate distance. The secret police had their people amongst demonstrates. That had never happened anywhere.”