Peter Bielik, actor Zuzana Kronerová and DPOH director Valeria Schulczová, from left. (source: Jana Liptáková)
On August 21, symbolically 56 years after photojournalist Ladislav Bielik took the iconic photo called The Bare-chested Man in Front of the Occupier’s Tank, his son Peter Bielik granted its certified enlargement to the Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav Theatre (DPOH) in Bratislava. He found both his parents, Ladislav Bielik and Alica Bieliková, in the Pozsony Dance Club play performed in the theatre.
“The donation of the original enlargement of the Bare-chested Man in Front of the Occupier’s Tank image to the DPOH is my token of gratitude for the knowledge and the strong emotions that the play brought me,” said Peter Bielik.
His father arose in the play’s part dedicated to occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact’s troops in August 1968, and his mother Alica Bieliková is singing the Vivat Slovakia song from 1994, next to Vladimír Mečiar, three-time authoritarian prime minister.
The exhibition
Visitors of the DPOH theatre at Laurinská 20 will be able to see the exhibition and the Bare-chested Man in Front of the Occupier’s Tank photograph during the theatre's performances. The theatre will resume its operation on September 10 after summer holidays.
The photograph, which has become a symbol of non-violent resistance and which in 1968 was included in the World Press Photo exhibition collection, shows Emil Gallo of Bratislava standing in front of a tank on Šafárikovo Square on the morning of the occupation's first day. Thanks to foreign agencies and the media, the photograph went around the world, and with it the image of the invaded country.
The invasion led by the Soviet army halted development in the country for decades, reversed democratisation reforms and destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Normalisation, persecution, censorship, political purges and fear took over society.
Bielik noted that what we are especially marking today is the civil resistance that arose here at that time, and which stopped the occupants from continuing in their action into other countries opposing the totalitarian regimes, especially Yugoslavia and Romania. On August 21, 1968, more than 6,000 tanks and a 500,000-strong army invaded Czechoslovakia.
Zuzana Kronerová's memories of the occupation
Prominent actress Zuzana Kronerová had approached Peter Bielik, asking him to provide the iconic photo for the Pozsony Dance Club play.
Kronerová was 16 years old when the Warsaw Pact's troops invaded the country. She was so shocked that she stopped eating for a week and knitted a sweater. She even pondered emigration to Great Britain, but she resolved to stay.
