A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [119]
But what they encountered was angry, unarmed young people. Some at first tried to block tanks by sitting in front of them, but they quickly realized that they would simply be run over, as were walls, cars, and anything else that stood in the way of these clanking steel giants. In Bratislava girls seductively pulled up their miniskirts, and while Soviet tank and truck drivers stopped to ogle young Slovak thighs, young men ran up and smashed headlights with rocks and managed to set some oil drums on fire. A tank column from Hungary noisily squeaked and rumbled across the Danube bridge into Bratislava as university students cursed and threw bricks. A Soviet soldier dropped to firing position on the back of a tank and shot and killed a fifteen-year-old nursing student. The crowd that had gathered became furious, but the Soviets fired a few more rounds, killing another four unarmed people. The Soviets moved 175,000 troops against young Czechs and Slovaks throwing stones and bricks, which rang like off-key bells against the armor plating of unstoppable tanks.
By daybreak, August 21, every town of any size in the country was under the control of armored divisions. The foreign press reported spectacular acts of futile defiance. In Prague a legless World War II veteran dared tanks to roll over him. A girl ducked past the bayonets of a tank crew to mark a swastika on their tank. The Soviets were attacked with burning rags and Molotov cocktails. A few tanks burst into flames, and one ammunition truck exploded. Young men wrapped themselves in Czech flags and charged tanks armed only with empty cans to stuff down the barrels. Flaming rags were dropped on tanks, and more of them caught fire. Scraps of furniture, car parts, and trees were tossed across streets for barricades. The tanks rolled effortlessly over them. On Thursday and Friday one-hour nationwide work stoppages were announced by the honking of horns. In one small village a tank column was turned back from a bridge by villagers who would not move. In Bratislava brown paper was stuck over tank periscopes to momentarily blind crews, and some tanks were set on fire.
For the first time in almost two decades, Czechoslovakians had been allowed to spend their summer vacation abroad. This was the news from home they were picking up on radio, television, and newspapers. Frantisek Kraus had recently died from his wartime ailments. Alice and their son Tomas were visiting friends in West Berlin. Reading the news, they were in no hurry to return.
The Skala family, on vacation in Denmark, started picking out the words Czechoslovakia and Prague in Danish conversations. Then they turned on the television and saw their hometown. The airport, the national museum, and the television center were shot up. At least twenty people had been killed in Prague alone. Russian troops had torn up the Czech Writers Union with crowbars.
In the new freedom of 1968 a youth trip to Israel had been organized by the Joint. Milana Mandl, born, like Israel, in 1948, was one of a number of Jews her age from Brno on the trip. Because of the presence of Rabbi Feter in Brno, her generation had grown up with an isolated but fairly active Jewish life. But the summer of 1968 on a kibbutz was their first opportunity to be around other Jews. Her younger brother