Witness Milan Kazda - a brush with death in August 1968

Milan Kazda "I've got one memory from 1968 that still sends shivers down my spine. We wanted to capture the occupation of Plzen by the Soviet Army on film. Because the studio we were using had been occupied by a Soviet tank unit, we ended up paradoxically editing the film under the "protection" of the Soviet Army. So a film against the occupation was being put together in a building swarming with Soviet troops - or as we put it at the time: under the light of supreme darkness. While we were editing through the night, a Soviet officer came and very resolutely asked us to come down and join him and the other officers to drink a glass of vodka to toast Czech-Russian brotherhood. When I refused to come, they sent up soldiers with machine guns. The Commandant, by this time already drunk, tried to hand me a glass of vodka and I said - I've already told you that I can't drink a toast with you as long as you're here as occupiers. I turned on my heels, and with my back to the Occupation of the Czech Radio building - 1968, photo: CTKCommandant I left the room. In less than three minutes Soviet soldiers rushed into the room where we were editing with machine guns at the ready and cried: Out, out, out, quick, quick! They shoved us down the stairs. The studio was in the middle of a little birch wood, and we said to ourselves - this is it, the end - if they shoot us and bury us, as has happened in so many other places, no-one will know a thing. But, we were lucky; Plzen was in the part of the country that had been liberated in the war by the Americans, and as such was still a demilitarized zone. Luckily even the Soviets respected this. So they just kicked us out. It was three in the morning. We went through the woods, back to our families and told them what we had experienced. It was a brush with death."