Ing. Jiří Rak

"I have a rather specific memory of that. My grandfather from Brno was just visiting us in Prague and I came home from the after-school club in the afternoon. He was in our living room, telling the story; I remember the words. He said he saw a human torch burning. We were in shock. He said he was sitting on a tram going up Wenceslas Square to the Museum and turning towards the main station. That was then; there is the arterial road there now. He saw a person on fire running from the Museum ramp to the food store on the corner. There were these switch booths at streetcar intersections where the switchmen worked. The switchman ran out and started slapping the person, Jan Palach, with his huge coat, trying to put out the fire. Grandpa saw it as his tram was slowly passing by. Just imagine: my grandpa was a tram driver in Brno. He came to ride a Prague tram as a passenger and just happened to witness the situation first-hand at that very moment. Live action. One more thing; my mother taught Palach at the University of Economics; he attended her classes." - "Did she talk about him?" - "She said in retrospect that she didn't remember him very much; he didn't make that much of an impression. Given how many students there were, most of them did not capture her attention... He was not somebody special at a glance. That was all she had to say."

"In '68-69 I was old enough to perceive it. I guess I wouldn't have perceived it as strongly at age seven, but I did at ten or eleven. I was already in the know. I was in the know so much that in March of '68, when I was eleven, my parents would let me go from Žižkov to Prague alone. I went to Prague Castle and crammed myself into the courtyard where there were crowds of students waiting for the election of the President of the Republic. There were, if I'm not mistaken, two candidates. An army general, Ludvík Svoboda, and the other one was called Císař, Čestmír Císař. I hope I got his name right, I'm not sure. The latter was considerably younger, in his forties. The students were chanting in favour of Císař. His surname means 'Emperor' in Czech. So then the 'Emperor' came out on the balcony and addressed the students, 'Thank you for your support. I thank you, students, for your support, but let's accept the choice of Ludwig Svoboda, because he is a man with many years of experience and has connections to neighbouring countries and is a guarantee of peace.' So the students murmured, but in society, especially among the older and oldest generations, the name Svoboda was a symbol of great bravery. He wrote the book From Buzuluk to Prague, if I'm not mistaken. People were aware of his military life during the war and his fighting at Dukla. Even though the information, as it transpired later, was not entirely unambiguous. But at the time, he was a universally accepted hero and his election as the President of the Republic was accepted unequivocally. So, I was there as a child when people were in that courtyard waiting for him to be elected."