Fifty years ago, Jozsef Alena, a John Muir High School classmate and Disney Grad Night buddy, told me about the time the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. He knew because he was there.
I remember his story because it struck home. In 1968, I was with my family in Munich, Germany, visiting my grandmother and her sister. Not only had German newspapers and TV reported that Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia, but Soviet planes were spotted over Vienna. You know, Austria, not Australia, and definitely beyond the border of Czechoslovakia. Vienna is a four-hour drive from Munich, about the distance of Sacramento to Bakersfield.
Josef's story involved Russian tanks and troops. And then the occupying forces. He learned the Russian phrase “give me your watch” from the occupying soldiers, he told me. He believed that the Soviet soldiers watching over the “liberated” Czechs didn't know such luxuries as watches and, therefore, didn't know how to wind a watch. So, they appropriated a new one when the old one would stop. It's a moot point today because who wears a watch? But back then, it was a sign that things weren't going so well behind the Iron Curtain.
On May 14, 2022 Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest. While this is good news, sadly the stories coming out of Ukraine are not so different than Joseph’s.