“The more years have passed, the less personal bitterness I feel. But I was not able to find a common ground with people of this kind. They found a common ground with me. While they had been Communist officials, they didn’t want to, and I – each of us was speaking a different language. But the process took longer. When I had a chance to speak with them in person, it was already some forty years after, a very long time had passed since the time when they had been in an entirely different place and I was elsewhere, and we were thus separated geographically, and a dialogue was impossible. But later, even before 1968 and then during the resurgent movement, there were already some points of contact available. And if nothing else, there was the magazine Svědectví (Testimony), which documented the way these two categories of young people, then actually adults and older people, have been approaching each other more and more. Meaning that when the Velvet Revolution came, and we began arriving here as quickly as possible, then it became rather a matter of personal affinity, not as much of what they have gone through and what I have gone through.”
“It was basically not possible to criticize the Soviet Union in a direct and clear way. This was the proof that till 1948 there had been considerable freedom, but it was not complete freedom. It consisted not in that we would want to become subject to them and use this kind of self-censorship, but in our knowing with certainty that had we let’s say spoken openly and honestly about the Soviet Union, something terrible would have happened. Or something very disagreeable would have come about both by the communists and by the Soviet Union. We basically had some sense of foreboding that something like what happened in February 1948 would have occurred. Such a feeling as if somebody is aiming at your back with a dagger, some terrible impending danger. We eventually didn’t mind this as much compared to the handicap that the non-communists in those three years didn’t have any such power backing them, like the communists did, and which they then used. Thus there was lot of psychology and rational thinking involved, and also the feeling: Let us enjoy it as long as it is possible. As long as it lasted, it was great, even though we, especially young people, didn’t know for how long it would last. But even this felt as a relief after those war years.”
“If you have the possibility to return at any time, then it is no longer the real option. You stop being an exile, and you become... At present, I hold two citizenships. And you are a Czech citizen and at the same time an American citizen who can live there and here as well. Thus, as long as it’s feasible, there are advantages in it. At that time, there were also other personal contacts that I had there, and so I decided I would do it this way. When you live somewhere for a very long time and you are basically at the end of your career, and thus you are independent in this sense, then your choice becomes much wider than if you are an exile who doesn’t like living in another country, but has to live there because there is no other choice. But if this choice exists and it is only up to your personal decision where you want to live, and there can be, and are, people who have remained in America, you are somehow connected to that country if you have been living there for so long. Take healthcare, for instance, if you are an elderly person, and you are used to it. I’m not talking about quality. But you already have your personal... There are people whom you simply need for some reasons. And there are wonderful institutions there. For me, for instance, it’s useful that I can borrow anything from the Library of Congress in Washington, although it’s not a circulating library, only a library for researchers. But the employees, even former employees, have the privilege. And there are other practical things as well. You own an apartment there, for instance. Which is a place for you or for someone who comes to visit you and can stay in your place. There are various practical matters, which do not – I wouldn’t say do not allow you, but which enable you not to be in both places at the same time, but living alternately here and there.”
“I was one of those lucky people who throughout all these forty years were actually able to stay in touch with the Czech language, Czech events, living in this microcosm of the Czech exile community. I didn’t have any serious financial problems, although there were times when I was not doing well. In Frankfurt, Pavel Tigrid founded the organization Czechoslovak Relief Committee to help Czechoslovak refugees. Germany was still under the Allied occupation, but this was coming to an end, and the organization had some legal status in Germany. I was thus working for a small salary in the administrative department of this small organization which was helping people from refugee camps to be able to deal with the immigration formalities, to prepare their way to other countries, to America, Australia, Canada, to all parts of the world. Then there was a brief episode of my stay in Norway, when I was again as a social worker, so to speak. I went there to organize a transport of women and children, refugee families. Women and children were given the opportunity of a convalescent stay in Norway, which was provided for them by an organization of former Norwegian concentration camp prisoners, where there were many people who had contacts with their Czech fellow prisoners. This was a short time and then I returned to Germany and soon after, Free Europe in Munich began to be organized, and I began working there. So I have been there for about seventeen years, again mostly in the Czech community, working with the Czech language and being in touch with Czech politics.”
“The way I got involved was with a friend of mine – at first, a barricade was being built in our street in Břevnov, and then, it was already the last day of the uprising. We set out down the Bělohorská street, and there I saw dead soldiers, killed Germans who were shot to death, and we came to the barracks in Pohořelec, and there... I myself didn’t fight, these were only some last skirmishes. The Germans were more or less running away, and my friend and I were ordered to watch one soldier, a German captive- and a very scared one, I must say. We received rifles and we were watching him and he asked us: »Ob sie mich leben lassen – will they let me live?« And we said: »Of course,« although we couldn’t be sure of it.” – Interviewer: “At that time, did you regard what was happening as a just retribution?” – “I considered the uprising itself and the war against Germans and Nazis to be justifiable...” Interviewer: “What I meant was rather what then followed… what then resulted in this uncontrolled displacement.” – “I regarded that as absolutely brutal... Let’s put aside the question of its justification, that’s a different matter. But the way these things were carried out, it was awful at times. I have witnessed the scene, which I describe in Prague Eclogue, this burning of Germans.” Interviewer: “Have you also seen this fervour of the crowd?” – “I’ve seen this also, and naturally, I couldn’t understand it. But at that time it was not possible to stand up and say: Stop it, we won’t do this, we don’t do things like that. I watched it for one or two days, then it stopped but those two days were horrible. There was a majority of people who wanted revenge at all costs. I don’t know whether somewhere someone prevented it, but perhaps it happened. I saw only two or three cases, and one, the burning of the Germans, which was brutal, there were many of these cases. But then in another place, close to the Castle, I think it was the first or second day after the war, I saw Germans who were forced to remove a barricade. And two or three men were standing behind them, holding whips, and whipping these Germans. It was not some terrible torture, but it was torture indeed, because these people were absolutely miserable and pitiful. And one older woman said something like – for God’s sake, what are you doing? And these men turned against her so roughly that she left because they started blaming her that she didn’t know what a concentration camp was, although I doubt they had been in one, and they started cursing her terribly.”
Jiří Kovtun was born April 23, 1927 in Horinchevo in Carpathian Ruthenia (his father unsuccessfully ran a dairy there). After the family’s return to their homeland, he spent his childhood in South Bohemia and in Prague (grammar school). After the war, he studied at the Law Faculty of Charles University and was published in the magazine Vývoj (where Pavel Tigrid was the editor-in-chief). After February 1948 he emigrated, in 1951-1973 he worked as an editor for Radio Free Europe. Then, he left for the USA, where he studied library science and in 1976-1977 worked for the Voice of America. From 1977 he was working in the Library of Congress as a specialist on Czech and Slovak issues. Jiří Kovtun is a poet, prose writer, historian and translator. His fiction works include Tu-Fu’s Sorrow, The Back of the Whale, A Prague Eclogue, The Report from Lisbon; he is the author of historical works Masaryk’s Triumph, Deputy Masaryk is Speaking, The Mysterious Murder: The case of Leopold Hilsner, The Republic in a Dangerous World. Jiří Kovtun died on September 2014.
