Petr Volf

"Eman Bosák later became the chairman of the ČSTV, and from there, he even went on to become the minister of physical education and sport. He was an ardent communist, he got his high school diploma but did not finish college. He made up for it by writing theoretical works on the social importance of sport, and our Dagmara, who kept her critical attitude to life, to Latin, which she would never need, read his works and said at the top of her voice that she had never read such nonsense in her life. Because Eman had mastered the communist ptydepe and filled his works with endless spirals of contentless phrases and replied to her that she didn't understand, that this was the way it had to be written today. He may have been right but he did not win his wife's admiration. And as Minister of Physical Education in the ČernÍk government, he was appointed to go and visit the dying Palach in the hospital. He also went there and talked to him, and for that, he was thrown out of the government, and out of the Party, but he was also thrown out of his communist enthusiasm. And after 1968, he was not nearly such a passionate communist anymore, a working-class communist who is destined by the working class to liquidate that filthy organization of the bourgeois Sokol."

"They shot at us only at the Republic Square. It was a kind of a demonstration strike, where everything goes off, no traffic, nothing. We, together with the later Barrandov producer and FAMU professor Honza Šustr, rode on a scooter along those empty streets to Národní třída, and we arrived in front of today's Kotva department store, where tanks blocked Revoluční Street, and we made a graceful turn between the tanks and rode on again. At the Powder Gate, an ambulance was driving, Honza stomped on it, our engine died, and a soldier with a machine gun came running from the tanks and ran towards us. Honza was pedaling a scooter but it wouldn't go off. The soldier ran, Honza pedaled, until finally it caught on, we jumped on it and the soldier fired from the machine gun, but by then, we were disappearing around the corner of Na Příkopy street. And I'll tell you that the feeling of being shot at is something you can never forget."

"It happened that my camera was running when the truck exploded, which was plainly a coincidence. Then I got one of the most effective shots of my life there - the tank going from the radio station down the sidewalk and cutting down trees, running into trees that were on the edge of the sidewalk and cutting them down. I was walking about 20 meters in front of him, so the tank was cutting the trees down at my feet. I was backing up and he was cutting down one tree after another - a shot you can't make up. But he didn't fire. Fortunately."

"That was the incident with Palach. I interviewed the tram driver who tried to extinguish Palach. There were tram switches then that had this little shack on each side of the statue of St. Wenceslas at the Museum. The tramman was sitting in it, and he had this lever he was flipping the switches with. And this man was sitting in the booth when Palach set himself on fire ten meters away. So he ran out and extinguished Palach with his thick coat, which he was wearing in the freezing cold. I interviewed him. He didn't say anything interesting, he was a simple man. He knew nothing else apart from the fact that he had tried to extinguish the boy with his coat."

"Our house became the centre of the Red Army headquarters. This meant that we shifted our existence to my grandmother's. It wasn't that difficult, it was just across the pavement. Our apartment was taken over by the command staff, which consisted of the Colonel and his mistress, about four adjutants, telephone operators, chauffeurs, cooks and nurses. When luncheon was to be served, Mother spread the table as if for Christmas and set the table for twelve. Then the Colonel's mistress came in - they were sleeping in Mama's bed - and she turned the plates over and looked to see if there were crossed swords on the bottom side. They were not there, and the mistress declared she would not eat from such china."