Jiří Pavlásek

"Then I learned at the dormitory that Václav Tuček had been released, but Křístek and Máslo were not, they were immediately put in custody. I don't know how they distinguished between them. It all consisted in the fact that we were allegedly in a pub in Nový Hradec, called Odboj, that we made various statements against the states of the socialist world system, against its representatives, against members of the Communist Party, and they even accused me that I played and sang songs by the emigrant Kryl there. And not only there, but in the Odboj pub, which was closer to the dormitories and in the dormitory, too. And now they read me the testimonies of various classmates who confirmed my playing. In the end, I admitted to about three songs, but ones that I thought were not against anyone or anything."

"We came to the room and there were two guys - two colleagues, they were already there and they were telling us. The fifth one wouldn't come back. He didn't come in until sometime in the morning between four and five o'clock, terribly beaten. He said he took a hard beating. As we were being driven up Wenceslas Square, I don't know in what state of mind he took it across Wenceslas Square, and he shouldn't have done that. There they [the police officers] grabbed him and just pushed him into the police van. When it was full, they took them to Krakovská Street, where there is some sort of interrogation room, and there they interrogated one by one - ID cards and so on. In the process they gave him a couple of blows and finally released him at five in the morning, and from there he walked all the way to Žižkov, because the trams didn't run much anymore. So we met there and showed each other the wounds."

"Wenceslas Square looked like there were armored personnel carriers across the entire length of the square, but not troops, but policemen and militia. They stood there and people crowded around and stared. We were walking along Wenceslas Square, going from the [Palace of] Koruna towards the corner of Jindřišská [Street], so there were fifteen-year-old boys on the corner of Jindřiška, where there was a pile of cobblestones. They grabbed them and started throwing them at the policemen in the middle of the square. At that moment the cops rolled up and started to rush the whole crowd back to Koruna. And that's where we basically split up. I was already with only one colleague, and we came to the corner Koruna, and there was a barricade there, and it was on fire. I said to myself, we're not going this way, and we went back and went against the crowd and turned into Jindřišská Street, where there was this arcade of a building that probably doesn't stand anymore. We went into the arcade, it was quite free, and suddenly militiamen came out from behind the columns. I remember one of them, he had teeth like I have now, very few teeth, and he shouted at me: 'And... you hairies people, you should have been imprisoned a long time ago!' They had long truncheons and started beating us. My colleague got hit on the head, I got hit on the back. So we were fleeing down Jindřišská Street and there was a tram stop and one was just starting up. Those were still the old trams, where the second car had this platform in the middle."