Luděk Nemajer

"Then, after the wedding, I got an invitation to the Ministry of the Interior - which is actually the same building where it is still located today. First, I was followed by a guy on a tram and then I was 'invited' there for a friendly interview to see if I would be interested in working with them. They knew I was married to a British woman and that I might be going to Britain or that we might be going there, so they offered me to work with them. They said I could... I said, 'I'm sorry...'" - "What information were they interested in?" - "Well, anything. They just wanted me to work with them. I said, 'Excuse me.' It wasn't like in Kolya, the scene where they interrogate Svěrák and there's one good cop and one bad cop - it wasn't like that. But they pushed hard. I kept saying, 'I'm sorry, no.' They said, 'What would you say if the other side approached you?' - 'You mean the British side?' They said, 'Well, you don't know who we are. What if we're British agents? You don't even know.' I said, 'I'd say no to them too. I'm marrying my wife because I love her, not because I want to benefit politically.' Then I had to 'iron it out' through my father who must have been reproached for not convincing his own son into agreeing to cooperate with the Czech secret police. Living an ordinary life, these were just my minor brushes with the police, which I got out of by not playing games and saying no."

"I witnessed the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops first-hand because Londýnská Street is about a five-minute walk from Vinohradská 12 where the headquarters of Czech Radio is still located. When the Russians arrived, I heard planes flying at night. My mother woke me up in the morning and said there was a war, the Russians were here and God knows what else. Right away, my brother and I went out to see. Then word got out that we should... Well, we wanted to go because the Russians, the soldiers really didn't even know where they came. We only found out later that they came believing they were coming to save us - the propaganda then was similar to what is happening today with Putin. They didn't even know where they were. They came to our rescue and were so surprised when suddenly people surrounded the tanks by the radio station and started shouting at them. They just didn't understand what was going on." - "You were right there?" - "Yes. My dad warned us not to go anywhere, of course, but I didn't listen and we went to see. And that's where we were really in the thick of it. We stayed there for an hour or an hour and a half - I don't really remember, but it was rough. You can still see some of it in archive footage, but when you stand there as a seventeen-year-old in the turmoil, on the one hand it's amazing, but on the other hand you are afraid of what might happen. Then we went back home and then we went to Wenceslas Square where protests were held around the statue of St. Wenceslas and in front of the museum. We didn't do regularly, but we went there the day the Russians arrived. It was not far from our home and we wanted to know what was going on. That's why, for example, now that Jirka Mádl has made the film The Waves, I still... I know I should see it as a veteran, but I have this inhibition. I don't want to go back to that time. It was a time that you'd rather forget - even though you shouldn't."