Martin Poživil

"My cousin took over. His father was quite a communist; he was the director of the Radlice Dairy. We didn't have much contact with him. Or rather, he didn't want to have much contact with us, so as not to spoil his career as director of the Radlice Dairy. Because it had to be somebody who had the right colour book, and he couldn't have any contacts with odd people, and apparently, we were one of those odd people. Anyway, the contacts weren't that intense. Then, when we fled, his son, his older son, took over the apartment. We didn't really care, but then we asked him to send us some of the things that we had left. But he never sent anything, he just kept everything."

"It was November 12, I think, if I'm not mistaken. The last class was gym class. They were playing some games. Then I came home. My brother Tomáš, whom I've told you about before, was playing some improvisation of the national anthem on the piano, which sounded kind of pathetic to me. My mother seemed quite nervous. And she said, 'Martin, get ready, we're going skiing in the Alps.' I thought they had gone mad, or something. Nowadays, you'd think they were drugged, but it wasn't so widespread then. They had actually bought one pair of cross-country skis, but you can't ski in the Alps with that. Even as a youngster, I knew that it was fishy. I already knew, so I put my school stuff away, didn't do my homework and just had to get in the Volga. Back then, taxis were Volgas. We didn't go to the station by tram, but by taxi, which again was very unusual. Then we took the night train, and by then I was thinking that we truly probably wouldn't be coming back. But I acted like I didn't know anything to let the comedy play out, because they didn't want to talk during that journey through Czech territory. Then the border came, I remember it very well, an Austrian customs officer came... No, Czechoslovaks came and asked where we were going. I said that we had an invitation from a friend and were going skiing in the Alps. So he smiled, they were the people from the Prague Spring. And he said, 'Goodbye,' but in such an ironic way – he knew very well that if the whole family was on the train, they probably wouldn't be coming back."