MUDr. Jiří Wicherek

„Oni ale jak jim posílali ty noviny, tak existovala dvě vydání. Venkovské a ústřední. Aby se to dostalo do každé vesnice, tiskla se venkovská vydání. Teprve pak tiskli ta, která šla do Prahy, Plzně a podobě, aby byli schopni stihnout do rána, a když půjdou soudruzi dělníci a soudružky do práce, tak aby si mohli u stánků na pultech přečíst, jak strana a vláda vidí události doma a ve světě. Jenže ti, kdo napsali venkovské vydání, tak popsali ten sled událostí poměrně realisticky a kontrolní orgán to nějak nedohlédl. O žádných dlažebních kostkách a rozebraných lešeních tam nic nebylo.“

"Jak vjeli do města, tak se začali sbíhat lidi, kteří jim nadávali a hrozili. Atmosféra začala houstnout. Když už lidi věděli, že skončí v polích a budou muset vyjet nahoru a otáčet, tak vyběhli nahoru na horní silnici, která vedla zpátky k Jáchymovské, kde jsme bydleli. „Ten dav si na ně počíhal přímo před naším domem. Tam tu kolonu zastavil nějaký hoch. Mohlo mu být osmnáct nebo devatenáct let. Byl vysvlečený do půl těla. Měl jenom kalhoty, ani snad neměl boty. A ten si před ten první tank v koloně lehl. Nejdřív ještě házel popelnice pod pásy. Jenomže pro tank to bylo jako šlápnout na plechovky od piva. Když tedy vyházel všechny popelnice před naším domem, tak si lehl napříč před tank, který zastavil. A jak zastavil, tak se ten dav nahrnul. Kolona stála. Začali se sbíhat lidé z celého okolí. Atmosféra už bylo dost hustá. Lidé jim nadávali, jestli tam letěl nějaký kámen, to nevím. Snad ne. Myslím, že ne. To bych neřekl, že něco takového bylo. Ale hrozili jim a nadávali. Ženský tam vzali toho hocha a odtáhli ho stranou. V tu chvíli ale ten hošík, co seděl na věži toho tanku, tak otočil kulomet na ten dav. V tu ránu bylo, jako když do vrabců střelí,“

„Čísla popisná z ulic a domů se strhávala z toho důvodu, že když přišli v roce 1945, chodili a sbírali si lidi, kteří je zajímali a odvezli je do gulagů. Lidi si stále pamatovali, že se tohle dělo. Proto právě tohle dělali, aby nemohli sbírat ty lidi na těch adresách. S předstihem se již to sbírání lidí ztěžovalo. Bylo jasný, že je to okupace se vším všudy a teď půjdou sbírat všechny, kteří si na jaře pouštěli pusu na špacír a nevelebili soudruhy za ty padesátá leta."

“I knew about the fact that something was happening [in Poland] from one Polish man. His name was Roman Dorobek; now I am allowed to say it. About what Jaruzelski did a year later [declared the martial law]. I was already a civilian out of the army at that time, I was in a summer camp, and some Poles arrived there. It was a company partnership camp, organized by the Škoda factory. My wife was there as a leader, and I served in the camp as a nurse. That was the only vacation we had. This Roman was there, too, and we talked together. We would sit and talk in the evenings; the Czech and Polish languages are not so different after all. There were some communication problems, and when we needed to explain something, we would get a pencil and draw some pictures. This way he was explaining to me what was happening in Poland. He basically didn’t want to speak about Gdansk, and I could see that the poor guy kept looking around himself all the time as if he wanted to see if there were really only the two of us. It is true that we had had some drinks, too, and he thus let go of some of his alertness. However, as I understood from what he said, things had not been good at all in Gdansk at that time. He had experienced it directly, because he came from Gdansk. I could see how scared he was about it. When we finished talking, he grabbed the slips of paper on which we drew the illustrations, and he carefully tore them apart and destroyed them. At that moment I realized that it really had been no fun there.”

“In December [1989] things began moving among the Scouts, too, among the former Scouts and the hidden, current Scouts. I thus participated in the first meeting. It was done in a seriously conspiratorial way. The meeting was held close to the main train station in Pilsen, in a place where Kuttan – whom everybody knew as Vapusk – had a clubhouse. Vapusk was an old Scout of many years; he had even been in the resistance movement during World War Two. He was a well-known and respectable figure. He called a meeting of similarly oriented people there. We began discussing the restoration of Scouting and we agreed that we would go for it. We even set some deadlines. At the same time the situation in Prague was progressing as well. Thank God, everything was now advancing towards the restoration. It was great when the first free celebration of the liberation of Czechoslovakia was held in spring 1990. It was a great event and Havel and Shirley Temple-Black were scheduled to arrive. Pilsen was chock-full of people, it was something unprecedented. Such great crowds have not been seen even during the May Day parades. The city wanted to organize the celebrations but they realized that after the experience from November 1989 the citizens would not accept the police or the army as organizing teams. Pioneers (communist youth organization, transl.’s note) were obviously out of question, too. So what about Scouts? Therefore they turned to Scouts. We thus had a meeting by Hotel Ural, which is called Hotel Central now. The meeting place was there and our troop came there in our uniforms. We were the only unit which at least had some uniform. We had scarves, woggles, and green shirts. And black berets on our heads - that was our trademark. We wore black berets. We served there as the organizing team. I still love to remember it, because that was one of the experiences that a person remembers for his entire life. While we were there as organizers, I ordered the children to stand three or four metres apart and they held a climbing rope in front of them. They were kids no older than ten or twelve years. And not a single person dared to cross that line. Nobody stepped over the rope that day. Not a single person. And the situation was indeed tense, for example in front of the town hall. The crowd was pushing forward, but they didn’t know what was in the front. There was a great mass of people. I said: ‘You are not going to squash those kids, are you?’ At that moment, guys in the front line who were right behind the kids exerted all the strength they had and they supported the children’s line and they managed to hold the crowd back. Everything went without any disruptions. It was an intense experience.”

“Christmas [1980] was coming and we were looking forward to a day or two of leave to go home. We were watching what was happening around us and we noticed that there was something going on in Poland with the Solidarity movement. We saw that the situation there was developing in a similar way like it had been here in 1968. We joked that we too would go there to assist them. But then we learnt on the Saint Nicolas Day, on December 6th, that we would be sent for some military exercise the following day. We received the information and we had to start packing immediately. I began to suspect that something sinister was going to happen. It was evident from all the preparations that something was going on, because the commander rushed into the barracks and urged us: ‘Pack all the stuff, keep packing.’ I asked him: ‘The usual stuff, as for all the other exercises?’ Normally we used just an ambulance car and its supplies. He replied: ‘We pack everything. Go to the depot and take bandages, most of all, take bandages with you.’ I thought, what for do we need so many bandages, this would be enough to bandage half of the army, because there were so many of them in the depot. We began to suspect that something bad was in store for us. I managed to sneak out to the post office for a moment. Of course, I didn’t want to use the army telephone line, because I could be accused of leaking military secrets. But I managed to call my wife that we were leaving tomorrow and tell her that I didn’t know where we were going nor for how long and that it didn’t look good at all. That was all that she heard from me. I didn’t know anything else, either. We continued packing. On top of that, while we were packing the so-called regimental technical repair material, there was one very active officer, who always thoroughly prepared the soldiers for any situation. He was even packing Christmas decorations! The solders asked him: ‘What’s going on? We’re gonna be back from the exercise before Christmas, ain’t we?’ And he replied: ‘Well, boys, I hope we get back before Easter.’ He didn’t give us much hope by this remark.”