Ing. Jiří Marel

“My wife then moved out of Prague with both our children to the apartment that we were given there. I experienced the occupation in 1968 there. For about a year they were waiting what attitude people would take towards it, and then, during the normalization period, as it was called, they decided to do personal interviews with everybody. We had to reply in writing, too, and in about four pages we had to write our answers to various questions about our views on the issues. During the interview, I simply told them that I didn’t agree with the entry of the Warsaw Pact Armies, and I even added that the Russians had been always blackmailing us, that we had been forced to supply them with uranium ore and steel for their tanks. They expelled me from the Party and then from the army as well. About one quarter of us professional soldiers left the army, there were many of us.”

“At the end of the war when the Russians then arrived there, our parents invited a captain of the Russian army to stay in our flat. He lived with us for two more months before they left. There were interesting things. My mom naturally cooked simple meals during the war, and we had meat only once a week or once in a fortnight. She cooked at home, and I remember that we even made our own soap or black beer at home. When the Russians arrived, one of the things that happened was that he asked my mom to give him ten eggs, and he drank them, raw as they were. He made two holes in them and he sucked them out. Of course she didn’t have so many of them, and she told him. He had another soldier as his servant. He gave him an order and after a little while the soldier brought in a basket with about sixty eggs. The same happened with cucumbers. He wanted some cucumbers, my mom obviously didn’t have them, and the soldier fetched a bag full of cucumbers.”