Ing. Jan Šolta , CSc.

"So they issued us live ammunition and submachine guns, and then the platoon sergeant, the drill sergeant, remembered that we weren't actually sworn in, so we shouldn't get weapons. So he took the text of the oaths in the office, it was a kind of paper printed - 'I swear allegiance to the working people, to socialism, to the Soviet Union' and so on. So we crossed out everything, the Soviet Union and socialism, we crossed it out, just 'I swear allegiance to my land', I don't remember what was there, but we crossed it all out and signed it. So the oath that was supposed to be solemn and I don't know what all, so we signed it on a box of ammunition and we got the machine guns. Those commanders of ours didn't arrive until noon, before that they had been going there to harass in the morning, but as they were afraid, they didn't arrive until noon, and this Major Kopecký says - he let us stand with those guns and he says, 'I don't have any other order, we'll go according to the plan, or today is a rehearsal of the march with singing, preparation for the ceremonial oath. He didn't know we had already signed it, the oath."

"About ten minutes or a quarter of an hour later I went out into the corridor, and Honza (Jan Palach) was standing in front of the door waiting for Hubert. So I said, 'Honza, why are you standing at the door, what are you doing? Why are you standing in the corridor?' So we started talking and he was just saying that he wanted to study history and so on and so forth. And so I told him, later on, I mean, we met a couple of times, that he could study that history by going to the Faculty of Arts. I had these intentions, too."

“I made the rounds of about fifty different institutions, and then at the advice of one friend I came to the Institute for Culture Management and Information – that’s what it was called – in Černá Street, and I came there with an appointment of some kind, let’s say at ten a.m.; the building was open and all, but not a soul in sight. So I looked around, then somewhere at the back I found a lady, terribly fat, sitting in an apron and eating a Wallachian [egg] salad from a paper cornet, somehow, and she said: ‘What is it you want, actually?’ So I said: ‘I came to see Doctor so-and-so...’ – ‘Well, I guess he’s having his snack and he’ll stay there for lunch as well.’ And then she said: ‘And what’s your deal?’ I’m to negotiate with the cleaning lady? But I guess it doesn’t matter at all anyway, so I said: ‘There’s probably no point me being here, I’ve been to fifty places already.’ And she said: ‘And what’re your troubles?’ So I told her about everything, I said: my father was expelled from the Party, I had these and these troubles, written all over the place, my brother emigrated, so... And she said: ‘Where did he emigrate to?’ I said: ‘To Israel.’ – ‘Right, you start work here on Thursday.’ [laughing] So I was pretty surprised, and I said I couldn’t start till Monday. So she said: ‘Then you’ll start on Monday, I’m the director.’ And then I found out that this lady, who was the director, was actually a Jew – she didn’t tell anyone that of course, but she helped various people.”

“I have met lots of people who have in some way influenced my life or given it a certain meaning, and one of them is certainly Oleg Yefremovich Lushnikov, who was a student when I made my acquaintance with him in sixty-five; he was the only Russian at Unity – I mean Jarov – Student Hall, in Žižkov. We met there somehow and got talking. He was mainly studying Czech here, which is why he was sent to the University of Economics for a year, and his main task was to learn Czech properly, so he liked talking with people and socialising. He studied at MGIMO, which is an acronym of the State Institute of International Relations in Moscow, the diplomat school, and he told me – which was interesting – how he had found his way to Czech. It was because he had the least favours, so he couldn’t enrol in a program that would have English or French, or Indian perhaps, as its main language, from which he could go to one of the really important embassies, and so he ended up in the Czech class, which wasn’t exactly the diplomatic top league – from the point of view of Soviet diplomats. Nonetheless, it marked his life, which he actually devoted entirely to Czechoslovakia. So he graduated from MGIMO, then, when he returned from Czechoslovakia he immediately began as an interpreter for even the highest representatives; roughly from sixty-six, sixty-seven he interpreted all of the meetings at the highest level between Czechoslovak and Soviet representatives. So he was present to all the negotiations, whether it was Novotný or other big wigs and Soviet functionaries.”