Karel Polanský

* 1945

  • “I bought newspapers as a student at the time because there were interesting articles there; already in March 1968 they published Ivan Sviták’s letter to the prosecutor general, requesting that he re-investigate the death of Jan Masaryk. I read that with interest, and there were other articles as well. I liked to listen to the radio, watch television, read newspapers. In short, I completely changed the way I approached political matters. Before that I had regarded them as boring, changeless and repetitive things with no dynamic, and suddenly I found it fascinating. I started to learn things about the fifties, and back then I realised that if there is no competition to the Communists, if there are no competing parties, no plurality, there’s no chance. But there was no alternative, you either adhered to the original opinions and kept to the old guard, or you took to the new, progressive one, although I didn’t trust Dubček much any more by then either. Even so, I reckoned that was the lesser evil and it would no doubt be worth it. The half year that it lasted was full of a kind of euphoria, even though I was occupied with other matters as well because I was ending my studies at university.”

  • “I wanted to get somewhere to Příkopy [Na příkopě Street - trans.] via Old Town Square. But I found myself in Železná Street and saw that it was blocked by the militia. There weren’t many people there, mostly in the background. I reckoned nothing bad could happen, so I’ll just ask if they’ll let me pass through. When he saw I had the tricolour and a black band, he immediately asked where I was going, and he demanded to see my ID card. I didn’t have it, so I started to back out, but he was faster. He caught me, he was bigger than me, some 185 centimetres or so, a bulky fellow, a kind of daddy militiaman. He gave one to remember and then passed me on to his mates. They took me to the Party’s municipal committee. There were others sitting on the bench, who’d been detained as I was. I realised that the cage was closing. That it wasn’t the kind of demonstration that I could come home from, like in 1968, but that there could be consequences from it. And so I asked myself if there was any point? Perhaps it was cowardice speaking in me. I don’t know, but I took the tricolour and the black thing, so they wouldn’t have any evidence, and I threw them under the bench. Later, when the cops questioned me, I claimed, which was true, that I was on my way to Tuzex [a shop with foreign goods - trans.] to buy some tobacco. I had two bons [voucher] in my purse, that was how much it cost at the time. Later, when I was in Ruzyně, they asked: ‘Didn’t you read any newspapers?’ And I said that I wasn’t interested in that kind of thing.”

  • “Later on I really was charged with paragraph 202. I found a lawyer who was sympathetic to my situation; he knew what it was really about, of course. The trial took place sometime in spring. In the meantime I was sent from Žilina to Holešov, where I remained for the rest of my military service. So, my trial took place sometime in February. I was very lucky that the only witness, the militiaman who caught me, was nowhere to be found. He probably knew it would have been quite unpleasant for him; so he just couldn’t be found. I said: ‘Why should you try me? Why me? There was a number of other people there, I didn’t participate in anything. I just happened to be walking by.’ They had no choice - it would’ve probably been a different matter in the fifties - they drop the charge, and so that’s how it ended.”

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    Praha, 21.06.2016

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I don’t want to judge politicians, I don’t know how I would have behaved

Karel Polanský, 1968
Karel Polanský, 1968
zdroj: Karel Polanský

Karel Polanský was born at the end of World War II, on 24 April 1945, in Starý Plzenec. Soon after, his family returned to Pilsen, they lived near Bory Prison in the city‘s outskirts. His parents divorced when he was 10, his mother married a second time, but this marriage did not last long either. After primary school the witness studied at a secondary school of electrical engineering. In his last year of secondary school he became fascinated with political economics, and so he applied to the University of Economics in Prague. He and his mother moved to Prague-Vysočany. Besides studies of international trade, he also took an interest in politics; he attended various cultural events and political meetings during Prague Spring. And so the Soviet invasion of 21 August 1968 came as a shock to him, as it did to the nation in general. He spent the whole day in the streets and watched as Prague was occupied by soldiers of the Warsaw Pact. A year later he decided to ignore cautions of the security forces and to participate in a protest on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the occupation. However, he failed to join one of the protest groups and was soon arrested in the centre of Prague. He was interrogated and interned in Pankrác and Ruzyně prisons for three weeks. A lack of evidence led the court to drop charges of breach of the peace. After compulsory military service Karel Polanský later worked in financial posts at several state companies and, before his retirement, also at a private security company.