Ing. Tomáš Kohout

"We went to Velešín railway station in the 1960s and there we convinced the Russian soldiers that they were here by mistake and that everything was fine. We were standing by the tanks and discussing with them. Every now and then someone would get angry, so we would back off a little. Sixty-ninth, it's been here a long time, it's been here for a year. We have to do something. So my friend and I agreed to do something. I bought latex paints and brushes in Budejovice, because everybody in Velešín knew us in the drugstore. And in Budejovice we went to a few drugstores so that it wouldn't be obvious that we were buying larger quantities, in case there was an investigation. Latex paint, brushes, and at night we painted a few dozen, maybe a hundred metres of the international road E 14 [now E 55] that went around Velešín, it was called 'the relocation'. So we wrote slogans: 'Man, remember', '21 August 1968, the day of shame', 'David defeats Goliath'." - "On the road?" - "Right across the road, so it would be legible. Letters about a metre high."

"The general gtrike was probably the most pivotal event. In the company I was asked what I thought, whether to strike, not to strike. I said, strike in some way, yes, but there would be a need to keep the buses running and people could get to the square. Budějovice is not so small that they could walk. The buses were running, we had flags on the cars and we had lights on, it wasn't compulsory to have lights on then, but we had lights on. And I was also sent by the management to go to the square, if possible, to say our position on the general strike. So I was in the fountain where there was a center, speakers and amplifiers and a microphone. And there was the student leadership and also a couple of politicians who were already preparing for their future position. And there they gave me a brief opportunity to speak. So it was an amazing feeling to stand on the rim of the fountain and look around and see 50,000, maybe, eyes looking at you, waiting to see what was going to happen. So I told them that the company was running and if there was a need to repeat an event like this, that we would be happy to take information about where, where and how many cars would be needed to get to larger businesses, for example, to make it easier for people to get to the centre."