"Back in November 1989, we were filming - I went to Albertov and then I didn't go any further to Národní třída - some amateur climbing film with the boys. Someone came and said that Národní třída was dead, that something had gone wrong there. I ran to the radio station, got a tape recorder and on Monday I ran to the student strike committee, where I caught Simon Pank or one of those people. I interviewed them, and they said, "I'm not broadcasting this. In the afternoon, I had a microphone and I said to my boss, 'Dana, I filmed a report from the strike committee here.' There was no television coverage of it. I edited the material and the boss was perfect, she said, 'Don't say it anywhere. Say that you will play something else and play this.' And I remember coming into the studio and saying, 'Hello, dear student. Just so you know, from now on, we're not going to lie here and we're going to tell the truth, and as proof I'm going to play what I taped at the strike committee this morning.' I aired the report from the strike committee, it finished, and barely had it ended when I walked out of the studio — the director was already standing there, and I was given immediate, summary dismissal. Just like that. 'How dare you do something like this...'"
"I remember that on August 21, I was asleep and suddenly my parents, grandmother and grandfather woke me up in the night and said: 'Borisek, wake up, the Russians have attacked us.' About two days later, my grandfather said to me: 'Put on your scout costume and go to the town hall, you'll help there.' I think Kamila Moučková and Václav Havel were there, and I served them there, and I brought coffee and did whatever was needed. About a day or two later it came: 'You have to leave, get a group of scouts, you have to guard the radio.' That in Liberec they drive a big car, they have radar up there and they guard where the radio is broadcast from. So we divided Liberec into several parts. For example, I was sitting on the fence on Husova Avenue across from the elementary school, one scout friend was standing by the hospital as you go up Husova Avenue, on that bend, another was as Husova Avenue ends and goes down to the dam and another goes up Březová Avenue, and another was by the radio station. And when the big car with the radar came, the first one who saw it waved his scarf, the others saw it and we already gave the echo, so the radio immediately knew that it was coming and announced: 'Attention, they are looking for us, we are switching to Brno or Prague.'"
"Now the harsh interrogation has begun. They came to my grandfather, saying that if the paratroopers did not surrender, then Rovensko pod Troskami, Veselou, Frýdštejn, Tatobity and other villages where the paratroopers had been would be razed to the ground and would end up worse than Lidice and Ležáky. They counted ten thousand people. They took the trouble to count it, and it was: ten thousand people would be killed, men, women and children, everything, and the villages would be razed to the ground. And this Willi Leimer or Lachmann was always on the phone with somebody in Prague, making arrangements. Grandpa didn't know who they were dealing with. They said they'd destroy everything. Grandpa remembered that he had a lot of friends there, pupils he taught, and so on. Grandpa gave the condition that if the paratroopers surrendered, that no one would be hurt. That the villages would be preserved and nothing would happen to anyone the paratroopers were with."
Boris Hlaváček was born on October 23, 1954 in Liberec into the family of Dana and Boris Hlaváček. His grandfather, Karel Hlaváček, was a prominent member of the Home Resistance during World War II, who was involved in hiding several people and helping the Antimony paratroopers. True to his grandfather’s upbringing, Boris Hlaváček participated as a scout in the resistance against the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. During a meeting at the Liberec town hall in the presence of Václav Havel, he played the role of a messenger and a few days later he also joined in the protection of the Liberec radio station. In the whirlwind of political events, he again found himself on the anniversary of August 21, 1969, when he and his father joined a demonstration in protest against the Soviet occupation of the Liberec square, which the riot police dispersed with water cannons and tear gas. He narrowly escaped arrest exactly one year later, when he and a friend tried to lay flowers at the site where nine people died on August 21, 1968. After graduating from the Secondary Industrial School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Liberec, he wished to go on to study journalism, but due to a poor personnel report, he only succeeded after difficult vicissitudes several years later. Subsequently, he started working for Czechoslovak Radio. As a reporter for Mikrofór, he covered minor sports or youth programmes, and during the revolutionary days of November 1989 he filmed numerous interviews with students, actors and dissidents. He then had BBC reporter John Calley broadcast from his private apartment. After a change of management at Prague Radio, he joined Hospodářské noviny and later went to Czech Television, where he hosted the programme Kontakt. In later years he set up an advertising company, which he later turned into a publishing house. At the time of filming (2024) he lived in the village of Dneboh, near Mnichovo Hradiště.