Ing. Jiří Kolda

„They gave me an injection. I asked what for and he told me to calm down, that it was adrenalin to strengthen the heart and some morphine. I was naïve in thinking they would transport me to some Czech hospital. Red Cross’ flags were flying all around Prague, there were plenty of wounded by the Czech Radio building, by the St. Wenceslas statue. As we were passing Hlávka’s bridge, I was banging my hands against the ambulance’s door because there was a hospital on the Štvanice island. We drove through the Štrossmayer’s square. Then I realized they were taking me to Dejvice to the Soviet Embassy compound. There was a wall made of tanks there, protecting the building. One of them had to move out to let us in. We entered Stromovka and stopped in front of the first building, a summer residence. There the officer got out of the ambulance. There were many officers there. Since no battles were to be fought, they just smoked and chatted. He said that I was the one who attacked them with a weapon. They carried me out on a stretcher and brought me to some bushes where they dumped me on the ground. A soldier with an assault rifle squatted next to me. I was already losing consciousness due to the significant blood loss. It was dawn, around 5 a.m. I was falling asleep when I overheard: ‘Did he die already?’ The soldier said: ‘Not yet.’ Suddenly it became cold. At once they pulled me out from the bushes, loaded me on a stretcher and put me to another ambulance. Suddenly I received attention. The officer measured my pulse. I had about twenty, really low. They were probably waiting for an instruction where to take me. Meanwhile – and that is important – the first Ministry workers came to work at around 6 a.m. and saw all the mess. The bookcase was shattered in the office, paradoxically full of Marx, Engels and Lenin. They asked the gatekeepers who told them that Vilímek was taken away in a troop carrier and the second one with a blanket on his face in an ambulance. Surprisingly, they acted quickly. They notified the minister who contacted general Chlad, a Volhynia Czech who fought in Svoboda’s army. By coincidence he attended the same school as the Soviet general in charge of Prague’s occupation. They brought him the Soviet cartridges from the ministry. Two unarmed people disappearing from the ministry – that was apparently too much even for the Russian mayhem. Based on that they received an order to save my life and return me in a decent state.”

“I don’t know what was the name of the soldier. In 1990 I told my story to someone from the Institute of History, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. They told me to contact an editor of Izvestia, Šinkarjev. We had met. I told him in Russian what had happened to me and that I’d appreciate if he tried to find this Soviet soldier. That I’d like to talk to him on the phone. I suppose that he thought he shot me dead. And perhaps he was feeling guilty for the rest of the life since he knew that I didn’t attack him, that I had my arms lifted up. Him saying that I attacked him was his defense. He was simply scared. This Šinkarjev heard me out, nodded his head and did nothing. So I have no information about this soldier’s fate.”