The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia was led by the Soviet Union.
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, under a waning Moon, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungry followed the snarling Great Red Bear in to Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet circus of sour and blood had begun.
The intention was to stop Alexander Dubceck’s dream of Socialism with a Human Face … he wanted to permanently remove state control of the economy. And he also wanted to allow free speech in the Press.
The pact’s invasion cost at least 17 civilians lives and 500 were wounded. The occupation had come out of the darkness and for lifetimes left veils of history, despair, fear and fury across these beleaguered lands.
The occupation was of course tribal – poor countries devouring poor countries, the madness of the power-hungry crashing steel wheels and metal bombs through the lives and souls of folk who knew nothing …
These folk simply battened down the thatches and barns, fled to the mountains or dug holes in the ground to disappear down.
Others though remained to fight in the streets and squares and back alleys of their home towns.
I lived and worked for many years in a small Slovak city under the shark’s teeth of the High Tatras mountains. It is close to the Polish border and Hungary is a short drive away. Bulgaria is close too, as far as the golden eagle flies.
The city where I am still resident – Poprad in the Spis region – is a place with an eye firmly fixed on the future’s horizon. It is becoming chic – cafe society, tourism, nature and business. Its people are sophisticated and go-ahead.
But today towns and cities like Poprad, dotted across Central and Eastern Europe, are visited by the spectres from the dark side of their memories.
The grizzliness of the Great Red Bear is back in their lives, The Bear is eating off the heads of innocents a few hundred miles down the road.
Worryingly, most people in this part of Europe remember how quickly the bear can turn, how quickly a madman can change his unfettered mind and how quickly the future can become the new Dark Age.
Here we retell the story of Joseph Bonk, a man who learned to repair washing machines as part of his living. He was innocent and walked into the Soviet death machine on the streets of Poprad.
Joseph was holed by a burning-hot spinning shell. He died alone in the cellar of a small hospital in Spiska Sabota up the winding hill from Poprad.
Tragically similar stories to Joseph’s are happening right now on the white-hot streets of Kyiv in the Ukraine.
People are dying, families are crying…
Joseph Bonk in 1968 became the pointless – and for many hours – the abandoned victim of a war that for centuries has, in one way or the other, raised its ugly head across these beautiful parts of Europe.
But today many see Joseph Bonk as a major symbol in the battle for freedom and the right to speak your mind out.
Let us support his memory and in doing so support the Ukraine in its days of horror.
One dark day in 1968 Jozef Bonk stepped off a train in Poprad ready to make a surprise visit to his family.
Instead his liver was splattered by a bullet.
Jozef was a student at the Apprenticeship School in Veľká, Slovakia when Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia.
He had been repairing machinery somewhere near Kosice and had decided to come home early.
But he got caught up in a crowd of protesters in Dukla Heroes Square. He was ten minutes from his home.
Jozef was 19 and the invasion of the small down-trodden city of Poprad was a shock.
But it beat looking down at your boots to avoid the eyes of the secret police and the tenement snitches. 3000 people in the square at that moment had a sense of pride for the first time in their lives.
Jozef too was proud. But he was far from being a revolutionary, an anarchist.
And he was certainly no freedom fighter.
Like so many back then, he didn’t really understand the politics behind the fact that troops from five socialist countries had invaded Czechoslovakia because they feared the likes of Alexander Dubček, a major reformist.
Now the invaders were all over his community.
But Jozef was just drawn by the monstrousness of the invading armies and their war machines.
***
It was noon when he arrived at the square.
Minutes later Soviet shots rang out, boomed across the roof tops and echoed round the High Tatras.
Fifteen people were injured.
But Jozef was the one who died.
And nobody bothered to tell his family he had been shot.
“He was on a week-long furlough repairing machines, we didn’t know he was home,” his sister Anna Malá Krajňák said.
It was only when a porter at Spišská Sobota hospital found his ID card in his blood-stained jacket that somebody ran to tell them.
Jozef’s body was lying in the basement of the hospital. His liver had been ruptured.
He was quickly buried in the family home-town of Hôrka less than 10km, away.
Anna Mala said: “A lot of people came to the funeral, but it was terrible because a helicopter was flying over us. The whole thing went very quickly, because everyone was afraid.”
Anna Malá eulogised her brother as a passionate football player who lived with his parents and was helping his brother build a new home.
But after his death Jozef became, in the eyes of the authorities, became something he simply wasn’t … he was officially condemned as a dissident and a counter-revolutionary.
The authorities had blamed him for his own death and his family were ordered not to talk about him or tell how he died.
For decades Anna Malá tried to put flowers on his grave but State Security stopped her.
She was even threatened with prison.
***
Now the square where he died is named after St Egidius and there is a small memorial and plaque to Josef Bonk and others on a shelf in a wall. There are plastic religious figures and a few cheap candle lights. Sometimes there is a picture of Jozef. Sometimes there isn’t.
But every year now people gather to remember him.
František Bednár from the World Association of former Czechoslovak political prisoners, who curates the small commemoration says: “It is sad that this is the only monument in Slovakia with the names of the victims of the crimes of the time.
We also regret that August 21 is not even a memorial day in Slovakia.” .
The monument has also become a tribute to journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiance Martina Kušnírová. They were shot dead in 2018 at their home in Veľká Mača in the Galanta district.
So, after 50 years Josef has actually become the thing he never was in his life … a figurehead against corruption, suppression and dishonesty.
For there is no such thing as political murder or collateral loss, there is only murder.
Jozef Bonk was the victim of murder just as Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová were.
Each of them are heroes because they were painted as villains by those who held power.
And now their names will not be forgotten.
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I have twice visited the small memorial in Poprad, the beautiful gateway to the amazing Tatra mountains. A sobering reminder of an awful event – perhaps not the last one to be experienced.
Poprad was my home for many years = and I miss it. Beautiful place!