Daniel Kříž

“I remember how the crowd crushed me against a parked car. Luckily, someone jumped on to the car and gave me a hand up. The situation was stressful and unpleasant. Riot-squad police in white helmets were advancing against us. I was close to the front, so I saw that they were boys perhaps younger than we were. Some of them were nervous, some looked angry. Some behaved aggresively, others less so. I also noticed certain individuals scattered among them, mostly bulky types in red berets. I was later told they were paratroopers. They behaved much more viciously than the emergency squad because they’d single out people from the crowd. Those were often people who were recording or taking pictures, who were dealt with very roughly and dragged off somewhere. When the situation became unbearable, people were screaming because there wasn’t even enough room to breathe, they opened up a passage through the arcade, which is walled up now - where the little memorial used to be. They let all of the demonstrators out through there. They ran through, policemen standing on both sides smashing almost everyone on the head with their batons. It was bad luck for anyone who fell. I was lucky enough to get through, so I ducked down the first side street and practically survived without any serious damage. But my friend who was there with me tripped up, and they beat him real bad on the ground so he couldn’t even move for two days.”

“Of course, I always found history interesting and enjoyable. The difficult thing was to decide to go study history in those times. Because it was assumed that you wouldn’t be able to teach history the way you’d perhaps like to. You couldn’t give all the information. In the end I chose to study Czech and French. Luckily, I started teaching after it was already allowed to say what you considered suitable, when political censure had basically ceased to exist. I consider that lucky because I think it must have been very difficult for every teacher, especially of the humanities, to withhold or avoid speaking about some things. To explain to students how things were without getting tangled up in it.”