Oldřich Sojka

“But to top it all – there wasn’t room in the students’ hall for me in sixty-eight, I mean, in sixty-nine. So I found accommodation in the place where Kačerov Depot is today. Back then there were Italian war buildings there. And accommodation for Charles University, in these kind of bungalows. Basically just two furnished rooms for about fifteen people each. There was only one free bed there, and that was Palach’s bed. So I slept in Palach’s bed for some time, and I had his posters around me. He loved the Far East, so there were things like pictures of elephants in a rice paddy, and so on. I wanted to take it with me as a keepsake, but I kept thinking there was plenty of time for that. They redecorated the place over Christmas, tore everything down, and there was nothing left at all. I was fated to always just miss Jan Palach, in a roundabout way, but to be part of it a bit as well.”

“It was interesting how the news spread through the street without any modern information technologies. Of course, I must have mentioned it somewhere. A book drive was organised for me as a parting gift. My friends from the street said heart-breaking farewells; no one knew how long I would be gone, and it was for a very long time. The remarkable thing is that the deportation decree was cancelled, or rather, the reason for the investigation was already cancelled in 1953. I have the documentation where the housing department of the united national committee writes that accommodation cannot be secured or provided in Pilsen. The trip ended up lasting six years from 1953 to 1959.”

“The original housing decree was, I think, for house number 37, which was practically a ruin. I think that a Mr Burza lived there, I’m afraid. Mum resisted really hard, and so we went the rounds of the houses with some secretary, of the committee I guess, and lots of them were empty. So in the end we got house number 6, which was the former mayor’s house under Germany. A beautiful Baroque building with two attics, a courtyard, an extension, and one pear tree. Based on the things that were all over the place, it had served as the HQ for the American army. So, spectacular and wonderful; we found a machine-gun belt there, and made a fire. There were bullets flying in all directions, fabulous. Surprisingly, no one was hurt.”

“So we did things like, for instance, we took bed sheets and spread them out across the alley leading to the entrance – ‘Occupants shall not pass’. Because we had heard that the Ruskies would come and that they’d steal our watches, we gathered all our valuables in one place, unknown to everyone; but no one came [to the hospital – ed.]. I have one horrific personal experience. The Ruskies ran over a boy, a motorbiker, and they left him there, screaming. No one was allowed to go to him, they’d shoot into the air. He lay there in the ditch until night-time, and then finally, when they left, the rescue workers could get to him. So the boy, I don’t know, twenty-five years old, was screaming in pain there, with an injury to his head. Then they loaded him up, and I went with him in the ambulance to Pilsen. He died soon after.”