Miroslav Grüner

"Yeah, and in that [year] 1985 or whatever it was... I don't know what made me go to watch a football match. I went to a Sparta football match once. I don't even know what came over me because I'm not a football player. And when I went from that match, it was after the May Day parade and there was still a grandstand. The older generation will remember that and the younger generation can look at photos or documents and know that the stadium of FC Sparta Prague stands on Letná plain. And on Letná plain there were May Day parades with all the waving and the good and the bad that it meant. And they always added a grandstand to the Letná stadium, where Comrade Husák and co. waved to the people. That stand was still there, and there were little lounges or, I should say, ajnclick (little room) at the back. But we can call them lounges on the gallery of the stadium. And when I was walking home from football, because I was working in the newspaper and I liked to do my job, I was brought up to be a reporter, so I peeked into one of those lounges and there was a light machine gun on a tripod, pointed across the stand at Letná plain. I guess it was there ready in case the spectators of the football match got angry." "And that was around May Day?" "That was after May Day, sometime between '85 and '88. For me as a young guy, it was a certain turn of opinion that on May Day, you point a light machine gun at the people you represent." "And the machine gun was aimed at the Letná Plain?" "It was aimed at the Letná. Basically, all they had to do was to open the curtain in front of which the representatives of socialist Czechoslovakia were standing and let it go. Put on the belt and let go. I saw the machine gun with my own eyes and I was out of the army, I knew it was a machine gun and I looked. Although, of course, I was under no illusions, but I didn't expect to see this."

“We still keep that confiscation decree somewhere at home. It was a very peculiar document. It was handwritten—at that time, not every local office had a typewriter. My grandfather had one, but the chairman of the national committee didn’t. So, it’s handwritten. It probably doesn’t matter that it’s full of spelling mistakes, because these were people who believed in their cause—which meant dealing with the class enemy. And my grandfather was considered one. It showed, for example, when news spread that Comrade Gottwald had died—even months later, there was still hysteria. I think the news came out in the winter of 1952/1953, and our mill was confiscated just before the 1953 harvest. The comrades timed it well because they seized it right before the grain was to be harvested—so they kept the yield for themselves. In other words, they let them grow the crops and then loaded my grandfather onto a wagon and gave him 48 hours to move to a place of forced residence, which was near the Orlík Dam in the Příbram region. And my grandfather was very glad he didn’t end up in a labor camp—or hanged. That’s what he feared most—that they would hang him.”