National Post (National Edition)
On this day 50 years ago, I watched freedom die in Prague.
‘THE RUSSIANS ARE OCCUPYING US,’ MY FATHER TOLD ME. I DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM.
It was the middle of the night on Aug. 21, 1968. I was 15. I woke up for the time-honoured reason: I had to relieve my bladder.
The city was quiet. That hadn’t always been the case in recent months. We in Prague had been living through what history remembers as the Prague Spring, a brief moment of political liberalization during the height of the Cold War. I had lived my whole life in communist Czechoslovakia, occupied or dominated by the Soviet Union since the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. The last few months had been something new entirely: magazines, newspapers, music, tourism — all were flourishing. It seemed like it would never end.
But it would end. And I was witnessing it at that very moment.
Very little light was coming in through the curtains of my bedroom when I woke up just after 3 a.m. Every so often a trolley would rumble by, sparks flying off its wires and casting shadows in my bedroom. But nothing seemed amiss. I began to tiptoe through our apartment.
The layout of those old Eastern European units was unusual. In order to make it to the toilet, I had to pass through the bedroom my parents slept in. As soon as I stepped into it, I noticed something unusual. My parents were motionless in their bed, but they were tucked in very close to each other, a transistor radio between their heads, its volume set very low. I was only half awake, and my bladder was demanding immediate attention, so I pressed on.
But still, this was very odd. Why were my parents awake at three in the morning, listening to the radio in their dark bedroom?
The toilet was at the far end of the apartment. I crossed as quietly as I could and relieved myself. I stepped back into the hall and now, more awake than I’d been just minutes ago, noticed something else that was odd. Just to the left of the toilet, there was a little table upon which rested our heavy, black, rotary dial phone. Next to the phone there was an ashtray. At this time of night the ashtray would normally be empty. My mother would never go to bed with a single cigarette butt left in an ashtray or with a single dish in the sink.
But there was a butt in the ashtray. And it was still smouldering.
The phone must have rung, I thought to myself. My dad answered and he lit a cigarette. It made sense. Still, a phone call at this time of night could not have been anything good.
I stepped into my parents’ bedroom and continued toward my own bed. They were still in the same position, listening. I said to my father: “What’s going on? Did someone call? A cigarette butt is still smoking in your ashtray.” I stopped and waited. They were listening intently. It took a good while for my dad to answer me. “We’re being occupied by the Russians,” he said.
My first thought was “Pfft. Yeah, right.” I didn’t believe him. I don’t know why I didn’t. But I just went back to bed. I lay there, thinking boyish thoughts, daydreaming about the millions of boys all over the world, just like me, lying awake in their own beds at that very moment. I began to make plans for the next day: I’d get up, get dressed my bright floral shirt — very hippy of me — and then ride the bus to meet up with my friends. We’d formed a band. We were convinced that we were about to become bigger than the Beatles. Maybe the tourists that had started flooding the city during the spring would notice us and hear our songs. We’d never known a spring or summer like it. Everything seemed possible.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to stop thinking about the music and the tourists and the millions of boys all over the world, just like me. It was three o’clock in the morning and all was quiet. It was time to sleep.
When I opened my eyes two hours later, dawn had broken. The shadows were gone. A terrific rumble was shaking the house. Columns of tanks were advancing down our street, where trolleys’ overhead wires sparked the night before. Jet fighters were roaring through the skies above.
The Prague Spring was over. And so was my life, as I’d known it until then.
At first, I was unimpressed and unafraid. I wanted to head onto the streets and join the protests that were forming. My parents forbade this, and it’s a good thing they did. We stayed inside all that first day, listening to the radio in our apartment. It was broadcasting from a secret location, pleading with the public to offer no resistance. Not everyone listened. More than 100 civilians were killed in clashes with Soviet troops in the coming weeks.
The next day, we ventured out together. We were quickly stopped at a Soviet checkpoint. My parents were afraid the Russians would steal our watches — bad impressions left over from earlier occupations. But the soldiers just waved us through. My high school wasn’t far ahead. There were tanks parked in front of it.
My parents decided to flee the country. My father was an author; one of his books, The Shop on Main Street, had been turned into a film that won an Academy Award only three years earlier. We were also Jewish, and we were very conscious of how vulnerable that could make us. My father’s friend Arnošt Lustig, a fellow Jewish author, had warned my father to be ready to run if the Soviets attacked. We worried they’d round up the intellectuals first and crush us, to make a point about countries that would dare liberalize beyond what Moscow permitted.
But what did run mean? Run to where? No one knew. My father tied a rope to a radiator in our apartment so that we could climb out the window if the Russians were storming our building. Luckily it never came to that, and we joined others in endless lines, arranging travel documents. Thousands of other people had had the same idea.
Our papers came through in a matter of weeks. Not everyone’s did. We left behind everything. All our possessions. Even our dog was given to a neighbour. We escaped to Austria, and then to Israel and later Canada. I became a musician (though never, I admit, quite as big as the Beatles).
And I’ve thought often back to that night. Fifty years ago today, as the Prague Spring came to its sudden, violent end, I was watching. Even if I didn’t realize what it was I was seeing.
I WAS WATCHING. EVEN IF I DIDN’T REALIZE WHAT IT WAS I WAS SEEING.