Zdeněk Koukal

"Later, when I served in the military, it was in the year 1973, so the first political training of the team, it was just such a lecture by Comrade Politruk that he started explaining something to us there, and the first thing he said was that in 1968 the counterrevolution in Prague took place, and that the Soviet army liberated us. They must have hammered it into your parents' heads all their lives in schools, they tried too, but no one ever convinced me. That they didn't shoot anyone and that they were just defending themselves. So I got up and told him: 'Uncle, what are you talking about, my friend was shot!' I was let out again in the morning because I didn't have an oath, nothing, and he was decent... probably one of the few decent people."

"Well, when they gave us the newspaper, he wanted to let us out, and he pulled us back as the Russians were passing by. And suddenly the car stopped there, and I saw it from my window, I really saw it, and there was a young man walking by, the Russians stopped him and there was a sign written: 'Go home, Ivan.' It was in Russian. And Moscow and there was the number of kilometres. And they gave him a brick to erase it. But of course it can't just be whipped out. Well, they shot around the boy´s head; they didn't shoot him, but they shot him twice and shot him around the head like that. The holes have been there for a very long time, for a very long time. There were such holes for a real long time... even in the 1970's."