Václav Skala

"I remember the eighty-ninth - how it started. When people heard that it was falling in Russia and that it was allowed to loosen, they got a little bit more emboldened, but... At night - I always remember when I went to work in the morning, the statue of Wenceslas on Wenceslas Square was covered... The whole statue was covered with pictures of Masaryk and various statements. I have that here. I brought that. And by Masaryk, there were flowers. They did it secretly. People were still afraid. I remember that before it broke out, I was walking from work one day around Wenceslas Square, and there were water cannons in the back. I saw that they were everywhere. When I walked past, there were cars full of soldiers, and Wenceslas Square was empty. People were afraid to gather. Only when things started to loosen up in Russia suddenly, when I was walking home from work the next day, everything disappeared. It was really overrun. They would have wiped out any demonstrations with ease. It was all troops, all around. Wenceslas Square was empty, but all around, there were cars on the side streets. It was packed with troops and militia. And then suddenly, they got the order. They disappeared, and the people took to the streets. It was clear by then that they were not allowed to take violent action against the people - perhaps Gorbachev had given the order."

"We were walking around outside in Dejvice, and there the soldiers had tents outside, in the square, everywhere, and they stacked up piles of straw and set up their tents on top of that. They were lying there in the dirt. The soldiers were rolling around all over the straw. I had Kiev, my camera, and my wife and I were walking down the street next to them, and there was a group walking toward us - it was some officer with two or three soldiers, armed. I wanted to flaunt in front of my future wife what a brave man I am, so I pulled out this Kiev, and I wanted to take a picture of them. My hands were shaking, they were coming towards us, and they had guns. So I was trying to take pictures here, and the officer came up to me and pointed to the camera, and I said (I knew Russian), 'Chto chotitya, požalujsta?' And he told me that I forgot to take the cover off the camera. And they went on again. Well, we laughed about it, but unfortunately, I don't have the picture. I mean the tent site of those... tents, that straw, those piles of potatoes or whatever, I didn't dare..."