Nearly 43 years ago, Peter Rehak, a Toronto man, filed a story of world shaking importance despite censorship restrictions imposed by the Red Army. Rehak, a frequent vistor to South Bayview and client of Rosie’s, is seen at the right in 1962 in front of the Berlin Wall. Rehak was the correspondent in charge for the Associated Press in August 1968 when the Soviet Union decided to crush the Prague Spring reform movement of Alexander Dubček. Dubček (left) had been elected to run the puppet govermmnt in Prague in January. But his tendencies toward freedom and free markets made the Kremlin so nervous that they invaded the country with an army of tanks and Russian soldiers. Here Rehak tells the story in his own words, “I filed the bulletin from the telex room at the Alcron Hotel that is just off Wenceslas Square. It was the unofficial U.S. press headquarters in ’68. I filed the rest of the story from the U.S. embassy. It caught fire when the CIA burned some papers and the fire department refused to come because of the Soviet-imposed curfew. Fortunately, an ex-Colorado forest ranger staying there organized a fire brigade. Somewhere I have a letter from the ambassador, the late Jacob Beam, thanking me for helping to put out the fire.” Toronto man filed historic AP bulletin
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Nearly 43 years ago, Peter Rehak, a Toronto man, filed a story of world shaking importance despite censorship restrictions imposed by the Red Army. Rehak, a frequent vistor to South Bayview and client of Rosie’s, is seen at the right in 1962 in front of the Berlin Wall. Rehak was the correspondent in charge for the Associated Press in August 1968 when the Soviet Union decided to crush the Prague Spring reform movement of Alexander Dubček. Dubček (left) had been elected to run the puppet govermmnt in Prague in January. But his tendencies toward freedom and free markets made the Kremlin so nervous that they invaded the country with an army of tanks and Russian soldiers. Here Rehak tells the story in his own words, “I filed the bulletin from the telex room at the Alcron Hotel that is just off Wenceslas Square. It was the unofficial U.S. press headquarters in ’68. I filed the rest of the story from the U.S. embassy. It caught fire when the CIA burned some papers and the fire department refused to come because of the Soviet-imposed curfew. Fortunately, an ex-Colorado forest ranger staying there organized a fire brigade. Somewhere I have a letter from the ambassador, the late Jacob Beam, thanking me for helping to put out the fire.” 
The moral of the story is–don’t forget to vote!!!