The Faces of Resistance

They stood up to evil, inhumanity and repression

The Faces of Resistance (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

The Faces of Resistance

Exhibitions or collections of photographic portraits do not as a rule require written explanations. The pictures speak for themselves, their stories told by the manner in which the photographer has captured his or her “models”, the environment in which they have been placed and their facial expressions. An introduction is, however, necessary in the case of Pavel Hroch’s project The Faces of Resistances. It presents people who over a span of many decades stood up to evil, inhumanity, repression, brutality and barbarism, who in certain moments displayed courage, a will to freedom, a love of their fellow man and common sense. That is what connects them.

In the 20th century Czech society lived through two totalitarian regimes, Nazism and Soviet-style communism. Its transformation was so radical that even many Czech intellectuals do not fully understand it. Explaining such a thing to foreign observers is all the harder. Until 1938 Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Jews and people of other nationalities were still living in the then democratic
Czechoslovakia. The Nazi occupation of the Czech lands in 1939–1945 was a bombshell with multiple effects: the collapse of the state (the Slovaks declared independence), the elimination of a sizable section of the elites, mass deportations, the murder and robbery of almost the entire Jewish and Romany populations and the annihilation of the rule of law and the consciousness of law. Resistance and opposition to Nazism took numerous forms: some fought on the Western or Eastern fronts, others were active in the underground at home and still others tried to resist in appalling conditions in ghettos or death camps by maintaining their dignity and sense of values, looking after their children and demonstrating their moral superiority to their tormentors.

Following liberation and the renewal of Czechoslovakia, domestic politicians, already subordinate to the Soviet Union, decided to drive over two million long-term German inhabitants out of the country. They too lost virtually all their property, which people “took over”; the decline of law and trend of violence continued as diversity gave way to ethnic uniformity. In February 1948 the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia staged a coup, which was again followed by the utter abolition of civil rights, the elimination of the remaining intellectuals and greats of the arts world, entrepreneurs, the self-employed, farmers and the church. In other words, another decline in diversity, which was replaced by terror, mass emigration and wholesale robbery. The country was surrounded by barbed wire, isolated from the West and transformed into a huge concentration camp. Standing up to communism was to a certain degree harder than fighting the Nazi occupiers: society was divided on ideological lines, while for several reasons the resistance could not count on a unified leadership. Despite this, people withstood as best they could, in the circumstances. They attempted armed resistance, worked with the secret services of democratic countries, maintained their religious lives, ferried what was needed across the border, stood up to forced collectivisation, went into exile and served their homeland. Thousands ended up in secret police torture cells, in prison and in labour camps. The power imbalance was such that victory was impossible.

Thought it went through alternate phases, sometimes turning more hard-line, sometimes festering, the Communist regime was undemocratic throughout its existence. In August 1968 those who had set it up 20 years previously made an effort to humanise it. After a brief period of reform and political liberalisation, the Soviet Army occupied Czechoslovakia, remaining in the country for two decades. A fresh wave of purges and escapes followed in the so-called normalisation period (1969– 1989), in which a collaborationist apparatus, taking its lead from the 1950s, permitted no civic freedoms until the system collapsed in November 1989. In this period also there was civic resistance, demonstrated by writers and musicians, who refused to accept the dictated requirements, signatories of Charter 77 and other anti-totalitarian initiatives, samizdat publishers, members of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted, organisers or apartment seminars and refugees who were not deterred from the journey to freedom by either barbed wire or armed guards. It was as if the complicated nature of Czech history in the 20 h century came to a head in the normalisation-era opposition: working alongside each other were Communists from the 1950s, cured of that ideology and otherwise, and, for instance, Catholics who had spent that era in prison.

The Czech 20 th century was long and cruel and to this day society hasn’t gotten over it. Each of the people whose portrait Pavel Hroch has created in this series succeeded in the years 1938/1939–1989 in standing up to evil, in risking their lives, in placing justice and civilisation ahead of their own peace and comfort. Each belongs to a minority whose work contributed to a good tradition, to the fact that we have something to build on today.

Adam Drda

The Faces of Resistance

B
Alexander Bachnár
Milan Balabán
František Beneš
Anna Bergerová
Emil Boček
Vratislav Brabenec
Pavel Branko
Pavel Bratinka
Eugen Brikcius
František Brož

C
Ján Čarnogurský
Vlasta Černá
Zdenko Černík
Mikoláš Chadima
Jaroslav Chnápko
Silvestra Chnápková

D
Zdenko Frankenberger Daneš
Stanislav Devátý
Levko Dohovič
Bohumil Doležal
Alisa Domanová
Vladimír Drápal

G
Imrich Gablech
Fedor Gál
Jiří Gruntorád

H
Karel "Kocour" Havelka
Miluška Havlůjová
Vladimír Hradec
Tomáš Hradílek
Vladimír Hučín
Čestmír Huňát
Jaroslav Hutka

J
Vlasta Jakubová
Martin Janec
Jan Janků
Miroslav Jirounek

K
Jiří Kabeš
David Kabzan
Peter Kalmus
Svatopluk Karásek
Ivan Kieslinger
Josef Klečka
Ivan Klíma
Pavel Kohout
Felix Kolmer
Jan Konzal
Miroslav Kopt
Vladimír Kouřil
Marie Rut Křížková
Miroslav Kusý

L
Ivan Lamper
Marta Ličková
František Lízna
Břetislav Loubal

M
Václav Malý
Eduard Marek
Zdena Mašínová
František Mikloško
Jaroslav Mojžíš
Rudolf Mrázek
Františka Muziková

N
Dana Němcová

O
Otmar Oliva

P
Karel "Fidelius" Palek
Viktor Parkán
Petr Placák
Jiří Pořízka
Jan Princ
Květoslava Princová
František Vincenc Přeslička
Miloš Procházka

R
Bohumil Robeš
Jan Roman
Jiří Runkas
Miloslav Růžička
Štefan Ružovič

S
Karel Schwarzenberg
Karol Sidon
Jiřina Šiklová
Otto Šimko
Miroslav Skalický
Věroslav Sláma
Jana Soukupová
Dalma Špitzerová
František "Čuňas" Stárek
Ondřej Stavinoha
Jiří Stránský
Vladimíra Strouhalová
Ladislav Suchomel

T
Jan Tesař
Anna Tesařová-Koutná
Antonín Tomík
Jáchym Topol
Vlastimil Třešňák
Branislav Tvarožek

U
Milan Uhde

V
Miroslav Vodrážka
Jaroslav Vrbenský

W
František Wiendl

Z
Ján Zeman
Vladislav Žitňák
Bohumil Zhof

BKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Alexander Bachnár / Milan Balabán / František Beneš / Anna Bergerová / Emil Boček / Vratislav Brabenec / Pavel Branko / Pavel Bratinka / Eugen Brikcius / František Brož

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Alexander Bachnár (*1919)

“The Holocaust didn’t start with the loading of Jews onto cattle wagons. It started in the moment people gave Jews slaps with impunity. What we call the Holocaust, the concentration camps, was just the conclusion of the Holocaust. But it began with that first slap. So it teaches us that it’s necessary to start fighting evil as soon as the first slap.”

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Milan Balabán (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Milan Balabán (*1936)

“At that time they accepted me without a hitch. But my siblings had major problems getting in anywhere. My sister, for instance, wasn’t accepted to study theology because to the hypothetical question ‘How would you organise the birthday of J. V. Stalin in your group?’ she replied that she wouldn’t celebrate it at all.”

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František Beneš (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

František Beneš (*1928)

“They started to follow me, to badger me. They later put about a rumour in Orlová that I had helped someone cross the border. People started avoiding me. So I said: It’s time to scarpe.”

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Anna Bergerová (*1929)

“When the front passed they advised us to go to Poland for delousing and to rest. Mum wanted to go home at any price. When we arrived we discovered that our whole village had been burned out.”

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Emil Boček (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Emil Boček (*1923)

“Once during a flight I saw the red light flashing. The fuel wasn’t working! I was wondering whether to turn back. I decided to return. Some fifth sense told me to climb. Then the engine really started to fail and I thought I’d have to jump… At that moment I was above the sea. Naturally I had a parachute, but entering the Channel in November isn’t that appealing…

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Vratislav Brabenec (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Vratislav Brabenec (*1943)

One peculiar aspect of the existence of The Plastic People of the Universe was the fact that as a group without recordings, meaning without official permission, they played virtually no concerts. They could only appear at private events, which they managed to do roughly twice a year.

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Pavel Branko (*1921)

“For me the antithesis of expanding fascism was the Soviet Union, whose seamy side I didn’t have a clue about, though even then it was possible to find out about it. But people reach for the sources that chime with their own convictions.”

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Pavel Bratinka (*1946)

“You were scared, but it was never overwhelming. The laws were elastic – they could lock you up any time. I refused to testify.”

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Eugen Brikcius (*1942)

“I signed it because I realised that if I had written the text myself I would have written something similar. I lived according to the Charter my whole life, even without it existing.”

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František Brož (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

František Brož (*1939)

“They didn’t act directly, for instance. You can’t imagine what they came up with. For instance, they banned threshing during the day, saying there was an electricity shortage. So that the unified agriculture cooperative would be able to thresh at the same time. They also changed the layout of the land. By this I mean they took one field from us and gave us another. But the new field was worse, further away than the first one. Their explanation was the co-operative needed the original field. They exchanged one of our fields maybe three times a year.”

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A farmer. During the Communist era František Brož was the only private agriculturalist in the entire Havlíčkův Brod district. Resistance was far from easy. In this historical photo he is with his father, working on the land.

CKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Ján Čarnogurský / Vlasta Černá / Zdenko Černík / Mikoláš Chadima / Jaroslav Chnápko / Silvestra Chnápková

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Ján Čarnogurský (*1944)

“The revolution had to come. It was only a matter of how it would occur in our case. Communism had already fallen in the surrounding countries. In Germany they’d knocked the Berlin Wall down on 9 November 1989. The Hungarians were letting East Germans into Austria. Poland was run by the government of […] Tadeusz Mazowiecki. In the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev had launched perestroika and even there huge changes had occurred. The isolated Communist regime in Czechoslovakia couldn’t hold on.”

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Vlasta Černá (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Vlasta Černá (*1933)

Fortunately Vlasta, being a minor, didn’t face torture. But they did lock her up in solitary confinement in an underground cell for three months.

“For the entire duration of the investigation I wasn’t able to wash or change my clothes. I felt like an animal. It was humiliating. To kill the time, I sang in my soul all the songs I knew. I prayed… Otherwise I’d have gone insane.”

Vlasta had to write a fake postcard from Austria so her parents would think she was safely over the border.

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Zdenko Černík (*1932)

“After four blows you’d say whatever they wanted. For instance that you’d murdered your mother with a chain. I remember the four blows but nothing more. Whether I received more, I don’t know. But I do remember that I didn’t know what they wanted. They kept demanding some contact from us. We slept on tables and so on,”

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Mikoláš Chadima (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Mikoláš Chadima (*1952)

“Originally I wanted to play the bass. Four strings – the fewer the better. But in ‘69 I had an incident that concluded with an insult to the head of state and an allied state. When they came for me, and my parents knew nothing as I hadn’t told them anything, my father thought they were after him and threw several of his illegally held pistols in the river."

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Jaroslav Chnápko (*1956)

“Víska was exceptional in that samizdat was created there secretly but on a large scale. There were maybe 100 people there, though in one room sealed with mattresses; printing took place on a mimeograph without visitors knowing. You turned a handle on that machine and with every turn one page was created. It was loads of work. But the police never found anything.”

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Silvestra Chnápková (*1954)

“After the revolution all kinds of people started to say hello to us. I founded the Civic Forum in Osvračín and people asked me if I’d be the mayor. I think some were afraid that we’d want to get them back for what they’d done to us. But naturally nobody apologised to us. With a few exceptions, the locals kept their distance.”

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DKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Zdenko Frankenberger Daneš / Stanislav Devátý / Levko Dohovič / Bohumil Doležal / Ailsa Domanová / Vladimír Drápal

Zdenko Frankenberger Daneš (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Zdenko Frankenberger Daneš (*1920)

“We never learned why. We never received his ashes. But my aunt, his widow, received a visitor after some time. A German officer visited her and handed her a bill for uncle’s execution. Uncle’s death broke me. I was afraid. I was ashamed of my fear, but I knew that fear was stronger than my will, conscience, faith – basically I failed to cope in that instant. I began putting buttons in my shoes and walking on them all day to get used to bearing pain so as not to give anything away during the torture I expected. But it didn’t help. Death was all around me.”

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Levko Dohovič (*1936)

“So it began. Uzhhorod, Lviv, Kiev, Kharkov, then the same route back. Because some paper always had to come directly from Moscow regarding where minors were to be placed. In Kharkov, where they had taken me to a camp for minors, the chief warden said he didn’t want me.”

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Stanislav Devátý (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Stanislav Devátý (*1952)

“When I think back, perhaps the worst thing was when I began a method of passive resistance. At that time I wrote a protest letter to President Gustáv Husák. Secret police officers were monitoring me and expected that I would go to a restaurant in Zlín, that I’d drink. But I didn’t drink. It was some time in 1983. A birthday party was taking place in the restaurant and they came for me. They arrived around midnight. It was a better restaurant – even foreigners used to go there. They came for me. They wanted me to go with them. But I lay on the ground! So they pulled me out by all four limbs, by my arms, by the hair. Then they beat me and I fainted for the first time. That was probably the worst. It was tough. Employing that method the first time just wasn’t easy. But after that I didn’t care any more.”

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Bohumil Doležal (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Bohumil Doležal (*1940)

“Jan Lopatka and I wrote that the whole of official literature post-1948 was a Potemkin village, that it was a simulation of literature and, what’s more, was ideologically trussed. (…) Though I was far from the most important person – that was Mandler, and then people who were far better educated and had better orientation than us, meaning Němec and Hejdánek – I was the direct cause of a quick kerfuffle. First I wrote that the chairman of the writer’s union, Jiří Šotola, wrote mishmashes and the same about Karel Šiktanc, who was also quite engaged, and it sparked a major scandal.”

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Ailsa Domanová (*1927)

“They wrote that it wasn’t in Czechoslovakia’s interests for them to let me go. I had worse pay than a cleaner. I worked for three years as a seamstress – I resewed smelly old things, fur coats… Of course they gave me such work on purpose. They were punishing my husband through me. Also by not letting me go home.”

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Ailsa Domanová with a portrait of her husband Alexander Doman, a member of the anti-Nazi resistance.

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Vladimír „Lábus“ Drápal (*1964)

“The police were constantly hassling me. Constantly. They came to my work. When there was something happening they picked me up at 5 in the morning and I sat in the cop shop till 8 in the evening. Often they didn’t want anything, I just sat about and they brought me some police almanacs to read. Naturally it was unpleasant. […] It sometimes happened that I left an interrogation, ran down the steps and after 50 metres other StB men came after me and arrested me. I said: ‘I’m just leaving an interrogation!’ To which they replied: ‘And did you say anything?’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ – ‘So maybe you’ll tell us something.’ And I was inside for another four hours.”

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GKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Imrich Gablech / Fedor Gál / Jiří Gruntorád

Imrich Gablech (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Imrich Gablech (*1915 - †2016)

“I fainted when I landed and a British officer called me to his office. I still hadn’t mastered English properly, so my communication was just so-so. He poured me a whiskey and asked what the problem was. I said I had returned from the Gulag. He was angry that I hadn’t said so immediately. I should have brought it up. But I defended myself. I said that we were a small state and I had escaped to fight. That I wanted to fight… I didn’t escape to hide somewhere… This was why I escaped.”

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Fedor Gál (*1945)

“I was born in an odd place – the Terezín concentration camp. I was lucky in that my pregnant mother, along with my brother who was five years older, arrived there on the very last transport at Christmas 1944 and I was born around three months later. […] Our transport from a camp in Sereď was headed for Auschwitz, but as it was already the end of the war and the gas chambers and crematoriums had stopped working they turned us around and we reached Terezín. It sounds strange and absurd, but Terezín was a better place to pitch up, because it wasn’t a death camp.”

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Jiří Gruntorád (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jiří Gruntorád (*1952)

“It was never possible to get all the work done and it was always cold, too… In October it started to snow and in May it was still snowing. They harnessed the prisoners to a snow plough… It’s hard to describe… The first time I entered the workshop of the Preciosa national enterprise I thought I was in hell. In the clouds of steam I saw figures running about incredibly, dressed in some kind of rags of overalls. And in a while just like them I too was running about.”

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HKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Karel "Kocour" Havelka / Miluška Havlůjová / Vladimír Hradec / Tomáš Hradílek / Vladimír Hučín / Čestmír Huňát / Jaroslav Hutka

Karel "Kocour" Havelka (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Karel "Tomcat" Havelka (*1951)

“I got a uniform with a green stripe, which meant I was regarded as a would-be escapee. So I never got outside the prison building, even to work. The first day I came to work I got a fright. They all had towels wrapped around their heads. There was terrible noise, steam and a stench from the vapours. It put me in mind of Dante’s Inferno.”

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Miluška Havlůjová (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Miluška Havlůjová (*1929)

“Then one day they took me off to an interrogation centre. There they hung my clothes on a hook and an StB supervisor said: ‘Go look out the window!’ A woman with a pram was walking along the pavement and in the pram was a child the same age as my child at home. It was probably the worst moment of my life."

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Vladimír Hradec (*1931)

“After an interrogation, they always pushed me into a cell. Somebody was sitting behind the cell door tasked with making sure I didn’t fall asleep. I had to keep walking. Any pause in walking throughout the day would mean loud kicks on the door and the order ‘Walk!’… After a week or two it was a case of ‘sleep while you walk’.”

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Tomáš Hradílek (*1945)

“We were worried about the children. That’s why my wife didn’t sign the Charter. Otherwise they could have taken them from us and put them in a children’s home.”

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Vladimír Hučín (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Vladimír Hučín (*1952)

“Ahead of time Vlastimil Švéda and I placed five-kilogramme teargas canisters with timers in two dustbins. When they started to play the Internationale, smoke began to bellow out of the first bin. Unfortunately the second canister burned out. Its heat made the bin glow red hot and no smoke emerged. Just one teargas canister was sufficient for the whole event to be cancelled… The smoke blew over a military orchestra that was playing with enormous intensity. They tried to keep going.”

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Čestmír Huňát (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Čestmír Huňát (*1950)

"The Jazz Section essentially escaped from regime control. We published books that weren’t subject to censorship. It was the same with concerts, at which new wave bands who weren’t allowed to make a living from music appeared. The membership base comprised a dense network of active people, which the State Security didn’t take too kindly to (…) Our ever-growing international cooperation also annoyed them.”

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Jaroslav Hutka (*1947)

His father died in Czechoslovakia behind the Iron Curtain. “I was in exile and couldn’t go to the funeral. It made me feel so bad that I thought I’d become sick and went to a doctor in Holland for the first and last time. It’s a long story, but I left him healthy and in a pretty good mood.”

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JKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Vlasta Jakubová / Martin Janec / Jan Janků / Miroslav Jirounek

Vlasta Jakubová (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Vlasta Jakubová (*1925)

Vlasta again became a messenger but also began transcribing reports herself. She wrote them in invisible ink on love letters that she sent to a made-up address in the Netherlands.

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Martin Janec (*1922)

“This is the most valuable ID that I received and that I possess,” Martin Janec says respectfully, showing the ID card he was handed by Ján Golian himself. Janec was one of the few that accompanied the great commander to the very end.

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Jan Janků (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jan Janků (*1921)

He has never forgotten a chess game with a fellow prisoner awaiting the death penalty. The prisoner’s name was Miloslav Pospíšil and he came from Bystřice pod Hostýnem."The chess game was developing nicely,” says Janků. “We were around the middle of the game. Suddenly the door opened and they called out: Pospíšil! I wanted to shake his hand, but they wouldn’t allow it. So he just kind of touched my arm a bit. And the game remained unfinished."

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Miroslav Jirounek (*1955)

“He tapped the table with the rubber end of a pencil and asked: ‘So what can you tell us, Mr. Jirounek?’ And I said to him: ‘What the hell are you on about, Vláďa?’ Vláďa turned red and left the room. Textbook-style, he was replaced by a bruiser. He grabbed my notebook – that infuriated him most – bore his teeth and roared that he would smack my head off the radiator. I told him to have a go and, surprise, he didn’t do it.”

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KKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jiří Kabeš / David Kabzan / Peter Kalmus / Svatopluk Karásek / Ivan Kieslinger / Josef Klečka / Ivan Klíma / Pavel Kohout / Felix Kolmer / Jan Konzal / Miroslav Kopt / Vladimír Kouřil / Marie Rut Křížková / Miroslav Kusý

Jiří Kabeš (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jiří Kabeš (*1946)

“Mejla and I always said that it’s better to play good music badly than overblown crap.”

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David Kabzan (*1969)

“During my final interrogation […] he […] beat me for four hours. He first banged his truncheon against a metal locker and then beat me in the neck and the head. I was sitting on a chair and beside it there was a plank bed. When I couldn’t take any more I rolled over onto it. I got a fair few more blows of the truncheon on the bed. He beat me for a long time. Then the StB men went for lunch and assigned a guard to me. They came back and carried on. They wanted me to sign some statement. For years I had held out from signing anything for them, so they beat me all the more.”

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Peter Kalmus (*1953)

“They took the tablet. They brought me to a police station and questioned me in connection to it. I confessed to having made it and requested that they return it, as it was my property. They agreed, but I wasn’t allowed to carry it through the streets just like that, as it was propaganda for the West. So I wrapped it in a newspaper – Rudé právo – and brought it home.”

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Svatopluk Karásek (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Svatopluk Karásek (*1942)

“I always say that politics is essentially an aspect of faith, that we are responsible for the era in which we live. (...) After all, it’s not enough to be hidden away in some church, to say the Lord’s Prayer and to let on that I don’t have anything to do with what’s happening around me. I’m for Christians feeling responsibility and being engaged."

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Ivan Kieslinger (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Ivan Kieslinger (*1928)

“A tank came up to where we were. I had been sent to Wenceslas Square – and I was supposed to shoot at it with a bazooka if it got close. I hid in the toilets and a friend gave me a signal. He was standing on the corner (…) and in his hand he had a large mirror via which he observed the machine. The Germans in the tank evidently didn’t have a sense of humour and shot the mirror out of his hands."

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Josef Klečka (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Josef Klečka (*1930)

“On the afternoon of 4 May a still unknown to me companion gave the order for me to not leave the cottage. Before he left he pointed to a wardrobe full of guns, so that I could defend myself if somebody attacked me. Then he left."

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Ivan Klíma (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Ivan Klíma (*1931)

“I was a member of a criminal organisation, without having committed any crime myself. But of course due to my membership I did bear a certain responsibility. I knew that’d I’d have to make up for that until my death.”

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Pavel Kohout (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Pavel Kohout (*1928)

"It had been a mistake of the intellect, not morality. The whole of the rest of my life has been devoted to righting that contradiction. People have the right to make a mistake – what’s important is identifying and not repeating it.”

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Felix Kolmer (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Felix Kolmer (*1922)

“I remember the arrival well. The dawn began and on the ramp there were people in prisoners’ clothes. That was the first time I had seen such prisoners’ clothes. (…). A man approached me and said: ‘There’s no escape from here. The only way you’ll leave here is via that chimney.’ I thought he was off his rocker. I didn’t understand where I was. My brain just didn’t take it in. Later I saw that on one side, walking in rows of five, were children and old people. Those were people over 42. And I understood that they were clearly going to their deaths. But still the term gas chambers didn’t say anything to me.”

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Jan Konzal (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jan Konzal (*1935)

“In the night, when I was asleep, they took away the priests. But when they woke us in the morning I was suddenly the second oldest at the monastery as a 15-year-old. They had taken those aged 16 and older with the others. My two brothers too."

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Miroslav Kopt (*1935)

“I went to work to hand in a sick note so I’d get a few days’ head start. At the office five men jumped on me and it was all up.”

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Vladimír Kouřil (*1944)

“Karel Srp was no longer in contact with us at that time. He had distanced himself from us. Those of us from the inner circle of Jazz Section are still a little traumatised by it.”

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Marie Rút Křížková (*1936)

“I immediately declared allegiance to Charter 77 on 13 January 1977, not only with a signature but also with a letter in which I responded critically to the […] piece Losers and Usurpers, which had been published a day earlier in Rudé právo. I sent the letter to President Husák, the media, my employer, various institutions and to the schools where I had previously worked. During an interrogation the StB showed me that they’d automatically forwarded it from those schools to the State Security… It was sad.”

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Miroslav Kusý (*1931)

“The outcome of the investigation fully proved also the subversive activities of Dr. Miroslav Kusý. With his essays, editorials and articles sent in the course of 1989 to be made public on the radio stations Radio Free Europe and Voice of America he actively joined the leadership of the psychological war against our country and our system.”

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LKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Ivan Lamper / Marta Ličková / František Lízna / Břetislav Loubal

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Ivan Lamper (*1957)

“I was aware that most domestic samizdat was oriented toward culture, history or feuilleton-style pieces, such as the then samizdat Lidové noviny. Reports about current events or life in Czechoslovakia appeared here and there on foreign radio. […] We wanted to do normal journalism, to write truthfully about people and their stories […].”

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Marta Ličková (*1926)

“Around a week before the occupation we returned home and everybody was saying they’d invade, that troops were already assembling. They had information to that end. So we said at home we’d think it over. But how would the Russians occupy us. We still didn’t believe it.”

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František Lízna (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

František Lízna (*1941)

“He found out I’d been inside and said to me: ‘Son, on you go, get married and start a good Catholic family.’ I was adamant, so the vicar called the state commissioner or the church secretary or whatever the function was called to discuss my case with him. Of course the commissioner was an StB man. He started coming out with some nonsense to me and I told him I wasn’t interested, that he should tell me straight whether there was any way that I could study. So he told me completely openly that there was a way, if I signed on to cooperate with the secret police.”

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Břetislav Loubal (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Břetislav Loubal (*1931)

It was 13 September 1950. During a class the door opened and the caretaker was standing there. He told Loubal he was to go to the director. But the caretaker had been forced to the door by secret police officers standing behind him. On both sides of the door.
“They immediately grabbed me, so I couldn’t escape,” says Loubal. He was aware he had couldn’t have anyway. “I couldn’t jump out the window – the classroom was on the third floor,” he explains.

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MKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Václav Malý / Eduard Marek / Zdena Mašínová / František Mikloško / Jaroslav Mojžíš / Rudolf Mrázek / Františka Muziková

Václav Malý (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Václav Malý (*1950)

“I regarded the emergence of Charter 77 as a great liberation, because for me it was a kind of impetus to finding a way to clearly express my disagreement with the then system. Naturally I didn’t pull any punches even in sermons. However, I didn’t have directly political sermons – they reacted naturally to the atmosphere of the time but were always based on the Gospel. When Charter was founded it helped me express my civic responsibility.”

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Eduard Marek (*1917)

“In my mind I built a scouts centre on Rohanský Island. I found a pencil and drew it all on toilet paper. I managed to smuggle the sketches home.” A move to the Mariánská camp in the Jáchymov area followed.

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Zdena Mašínová (*1933)

“What was the hardest moment for me? The fate of our mother, who died in a Communist jail in appalling circumstances in 1956. After arresting her they left her without medical care. They had arrested her in 1953. We discovered that they left her lying on a concrete floor in a terrible state… That was the worst time.”

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Zdena Mašínová with a portrait of her father General Josef Mašín, who was executed by the Nazis.

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František Mikloško (*1947)

“One specific moment was important for me, when I became involved in the secret church in the time of the dissent. I was deciding at that time whether to secretly go for the priesthood and become a clandestine priest, or to be active as a lay person. Life showed that I didn’t become a priest and that’s how it was meant to be.”

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Jaroslav Mojžíš (*1934)

“My clothes in Jáchymov seemed to be a uniform from the old Austrian period. There were patches in six different colours. It wasn’t possible to fasten the waist so the electricians made me a belt out of cable. We got a rusty bowl for food. And we gathered uraninite into barrels by hand.”

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Rudolf Mrázek (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Rudolf Mrázek (*1934)

“Apart from school, scouting was our main daily enjoyment. There we learned friendship, generosity, kindness, love of homeland, to defend it – all of this part of scouting. And they banned it because they didn’t need love of homeland, they needed love of the Soviet Union.”

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Rudolf Mrázek. A Czech flag constantly flies above his chalet at a convalescence centre in Slapy. The resort, where Prague Communists previously went for recreation, is today used by political prisoners.

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Františka Muziková (*1933)

“The lice – that was terrible. They brought us from Slovakia to Pankrác in Prague and deloused us, so I walked around the prison courtyard at Pankrác with a turban on my head. You know, today it may seem like a detail in the overall context. But even there in prison I really hadn’t ceased to care. You get used to prison, but it’s hard to get used to them taking away your dignity […].”

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NKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Dana Němcová

Dana Němcová (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Dana Němcová (*1934)

“We created a world within a world. It was like what was written on one Plastic People record – The Merry Ghetto. We enjoyed lots of good times that compensated for the pressure and kept us going when it came to resisting and insisting on this independent alternative.”

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OKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Otmar Oliva

Otmar Oliva (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Otmar Oliva (*1952)

His attorney Josef Krupauer offered to smuggle them out. But how? They wondered whether it would be at all possible. Oliva watched out to see which of the wardens was carrying out thorough searches of prisoners. He noticed that one never touched them on the belly. “So I put it on my belly and it got out. Josef Krupauer then saved the drawings. There were a lot of them. I drew two blocks there. Sixty drawings perhaps,” Oliva says.

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Otmar Oliva at his studio at Velehrad in Moravia. He is photographed with the door to his cell in the jail in Uherské Hradiště, where the Communists imprisoned him. Following the fall of communism he took the door as a souvenir.

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Otmar Oliva holds what remains of the last cigarette that Václav Havel smoked at his studio prior to his death.

PKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Karel "Fidelius" Palek / Viktor Parkán / Petr Placák / Jiří Pořízka / Jan Princ / Květoslava Princová / František Vincenc Přeslička / Miloš Procházka

Karel Palek Fidelius (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Karel "Fidelius" Palek (*1948)

“The editorials in Rudé pravo [until 1990 the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s main instrument of propaganda – ed.] raised the issue of Communist language as a subject for reflection of current life experience. What function does that language fulfil? (…) What does it actually speak about? Does it speak about anything at all? Do all of those – often bizarre – linguistic expressions delivered by Rudé Pravo make any sense? I soon realised that a certain order prevailed in Communist speech, that it really was speech about a certain world, albeit an ‘imaginary’ world, meaning a certain ideological depiction of the world. So then I began looking into the content of the basic expressions on which that language was built, how they related to one another, their ‘principles of construction’."

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Viktor Parkán (*1946)

“I got to know lots of excellent people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I didn’t go into exile and remained free on the inside.”

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Petr Placák (*1964)

“They arrested me before I could even reach the monument on Wenceslas Square. When myself and others were waiting at the cop shop in Benediktská St., I wrote on a piece of paper that we’d gather again the next day. The reason was a ribbon which I’d hidden in the lining of my coat and which had ‘To Jan Palach from Czech Children’ written on it.”

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Jiří Pořízka (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jiří Pořízka (*1940)

The second time was when in August 1968 he and his wife fled the Soviet occupiers into exile and left behind their little daughter Pavlína, whom the Communist regime refused to let join them in their new home in Sweden. He began fighting the totalitarian regime, this time over the right to live with his daughter… “I wanted to take a firm stand against the regime,” he says. He and his wife decided to go on hunger strike to win the right to have their daughter join them in Sweden. It was a minor declaration of war.

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Jiří Pořízka at his new home at Drahanská vrchovina in Moravia, to which he returned from Sweden. The former political prisoner, who fled to the West in 1968, fought for his daughter Pavlína, going on hunger strike with his wife in Stockholm in a bid to have her released from Czechoslovakia. Pictured with a Swedish newspaper that reported on his story.

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Jan Princ (*1948)

“We just wanted to live in our own way and within the framework of the laws of the time. We actually did things that were a service to the state. We educated people who had got out of prison and were looking for work. Today we’d get a grant for such a community centre.”

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Květoslava Princová (*1950)

“We discussed politics. I also copied books. We spoke about them and lent them out. For instance by Solzhenitsyn, who was banned.”

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Miloš Procházka (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Miloš Procházka (*1928)

They were equipped with a transmitter, an encryption key, invisible ink and false papers. Each also had a capsule of poison, in case the worst came to the worst. “We were to bite on the capsule if we got into an impossible situation,” says Procházka.

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František Vincenc Přeslička (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

František Vincenc Přeslička (*1933)

“I did it all because I didn’t want the Communists to rule here. I just couldn’t agree with that. But as a Christian neither could I agree with the position that the Church began to take.”

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RKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Bohumil Robeš / Jan Roman / Jiří Runkas / Miloslav Růžička / Štefan Ružovič

Bohumil Robeš (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Bohumil Robeš (*1930)

"They thought up every possible kind of harassment for me. They really put some thought into it. They were primitive. I told them they’d answer for their crimes against political prisoners. So they set on me and tied me to a stake, with my feet backwards and my hands tied constantly for 10 hours. They then untied me at 10 in the evening and gave me an aspirin. I went to my cell…"

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Jan Roman (*1929)

“The worst thing was my capture. Two StB men caught me. They arrested me in front of the train station. They came after me and asked my name. In those days, people saw spies everywhere. Evidently I too had been suspicious to the priest. The moments when they caught me were the worst.”

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Jan Ruml (*1953)

“They charged me with subversion. At first I found imprisonment quite tough, as Rudolf Battěk had received seven years. I expected a similar sentence.”

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Jiří Runkas (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jiří Runkas (*1955)

Though the idea of flying across the Iron Curtain was daring, it appealed to Jiří Runkas from Moravské Budějovice. He was aware that the Slovak road cyclist Robert Hutyra had succeeded in doing so and had indeed been inspired by another balloon escape from the then East Germany to the West.

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Miloslav Růžička (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Miloslav Růžička (*1925)

“I duplicated leaflets on a typewriter and then distributed them to people I knew I could rely on. One time I ran into a neighbour. He said some declaration had appeared stating that distributing printed materials wasn’t allowed. He also said that if anybody received such a leaflet he was to report it. Then he asked if I by any chance I hadn’t written it. So I confided in him. I told him I had written it and that he wasn’t to discuss it with anybody. But by coincidence they arrested him and found the leaflet at his place. Then he was interrogated and they broke him…"

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Štefan Ružovič (*1934)

“I’ve known Pankrác, Leopoldov, Ilava, all the best spots,” says the political prisoner today in a hoarse voice. However, he spent the greatest part of his prison pilgrimage in the now almost forgotten labour camp of Rtyně v Podkrkonoší, known as the Dark Mine.

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SKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Karel Schwarzenberg / Karol Sidon / Jiřina Šiklová / Otto Šimko / Miroslav Skalický / Věroslav Sláma / Jana Soukupová / František "Čuňas" Stárek / Ondřej Stavinoha / Jiří Stránský / Vladimíra Strouhalová / Ladislav Suchomel

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Karel Schwarzenberg (*1937)

“My view is you shouldn’t either be ashamed or build yourself up on the basis of who you are. Just say – God has placed you here, get on with it as best you can.”

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Karol Sidon (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Karol Sidon (*1942)

“A few days after the Charter, an article about the writer Ludvíki Vaculík appeared in the magazine Ahoj na sobotu that showed him in an unflattering light. It was clearly the work of the State Security. I took a small pair of scissors and clipped that piece about Vaculík out of individual copies and decided that I’d only sell the magazine with the pages cut out and then just to those I knew by sight. I had a hunch they’d test me. After a while a young guy came along and I thought: ‘You’re definitely StB, I can tell.’ So I concealed the magazine from him, saying we didn’t have it. More people arrived and then a young lady, quite nice, came along so I sold it to her. And in the instant I handed it to her, I said to myself: ‘Man, now you’ve made a mistake!’ She tore it out of my hands and ran with it to a man standing a bit further away. She was waving the magazine above her head. I knew things were bad.”

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Jiřina Šiklová (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jiřina Šiklová (*1935)

“I always just organised a garage with somebody where the consignment was to be brought. Then I met the courier (…) and told them the address where they were to arrive by car at a given time. The car with the courier then went inside or parked near the garage and then loaded or by contrast unloaded the consignment. The garages alternated. Sometimes it was a garden or cottage, a small house. Quite often it was an Evangelical rectory, where foreign cars could also arrive without being really conspicuous. Every place was used at most around three times, so the neighbours wouldn’t notice. Admittedly Kavan didn’t change the car. But every time they gave it a different number and almost every time a different driver. They knew what they were carrying.”

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Oto Šimko (*1924)

“It’s impossible to describe the change in the feeling inside. Imagine, I’ve got a rifle in my hand and I’m fighting my persecutors and executors. We’re on the same level. In other words, I’m a free man internally. So I too can fight against that evil.”

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Miroslav Skalický (*1952)

“What’s more, I had just had a child at that time. From a young age, when she was six months, I had her with me during interrogations. In Kadaň they threatened she could be run over by a car or that our house would go on fire. Which in some cases happened. After a Plastics concert they set the building where they’d played alight. In Rychnov they blew a house up after a concert. […] So I said to myself that it wasn’t worth it here.”

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Miroslav Skalický on the grounds of his “Skalák’s Mill” homestead in the village of Meziříčko.

Věroslav Sláma (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Věroslav Sláma (*1930)

On 21 October 1952 a second trial took place – as revenge for the escaped spy Cyril Sláma Jr. Cyril Sr. got another six years on top of the 14 he already had. His wife, the two brothers’ mother, received 11 years. Veroslav Sláma’s wife got six. Her father even got 10 years. Other relatives of Sláma’s, 13 in total, were also convicted. In all they were sentenced to 74 years in jail.

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Jana Soukupová (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jana Soukupová (*1958)

“When I think about the reason I got mixed up with the dissidents the word detestation comes to mind. The pressure of normalisation was for me, first and foremost, disgusting. The design of its instruments of propaganda was gross and the faces of the vast majority of the governing elite betrayed heinous personal preferences that I just wanted to get away from – to the other side.”

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Dalma Špitzerová holds a photograph taken by somebody during her first day at an internment camp. The photo was later seen around the world and published many times.

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Dalma Holanová-Špitzerová (*1925)



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František Čuňas Stárek (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

František "Piggy" Stárek (*1952)

“From around sixth grade myself and a few others led a struggle over the length of our hair. Sometimes the principal would catch us, give us two crowns and say: you, you, you, to the barbers! (…) Hair started to become very important for us.”

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Ondřej Stavinoha (*1955)

“I got as far as the fountain. The detonation was such that it propelled me forward somewhat. When the boom occurred I turned and saw Gottwald falling to the ground. At the same time glass and windows shattered and I thought to myself: I’ve gone too far! […] As I later discovered, the explosion ruptured the crotch of the statue and, if I remember right, ripped off Gottwald’s right leg. In the end I paid for all the damages, including the repair of Gottwald.”

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Ondřej Stavinoha at the spot on Great October Revolution Square in Příbram where a statue of Klement Gottwald stood. He and his friend Ondřej Polák blew it up in 1978.

Jiří Stránský (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jiří Stránský (*1931)

“When I had the morning shift from 6 to 2 pm, they woke you at 3 in the morning and you returned in bits at 3 in the afternoon. After work people could talk in their rooms. Four of them sat and spoke. I observed. I rarely said anything. I was glad they let me stay. They were a lot smarter and better educated than me. (…). There was an excellent art historian, Bonny Falerský, and he ran an art history seminar. We made a deal with a civilian, who bought all the postcards reproductions of works at the National Gallery and Falerský used them to teach us aesthetics. (…). Everything had to be hidden as the wardens found and destroyed them during searches.”

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Drahomíra Strouhalová (*1930)

In prison she was placed among prostitutes. “It took more than two months. I didn’t wash or change. I was so revolted you can’t imagine.” This was probably her lowest point.

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Ladislav Suchomel (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Ladislav Suchomel (*1930)

“I experienced the greatest fear in the Cejl prison before going to court. They told me my lawyer was there and he questioned me as if he were an StB man. I asked how things looked. He said the death sentence was proposed for the first six. I was second in the text of the arraignment."

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TKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Jan Tesař / Anna Tesařová-Koutná / Antonín Tomík / Jáchym Topol / Vlastimil Třešňák / Branislav Tvarožek

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Jan Tesař (*1933)

“I was writing my articles about Czech political compromises and so-called lesser evil that becomes the greatest evil back in autumn 1967. They weren’t based on an impression of Dubček’s policies but the study of history and were intended as a warning. They were also circulated in spring 1968. It’s not my fault nobody listened to me. Many times I warned of outcomes that every reasonable person could have expected, always in vain. Naturally I supported the Dubček leadership, even though I knew that it would capitulate. However, I always supported it as an independent.”

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Anna Koutná-Tesařová (*1933)

“I refused to confess. I didn’t want to speak. But they got to me through the children. They said, ‘It’s up to you. If you don’t admit it you’ll be here longer, the children will be without parents’ […]. I testified. I confessed. Dozens of women did copying. Whatever they laid before me I took on myself, to protect the others[…]”

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Anton Tomík (*1932)

“My faith helped me most of all. I’m a Christian and I survived thanks to prayer. I kept reciting prayers – otherwise it would have sent me insane.”

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Jáchym Topol (*1962)

“I don’t know if they had a hunch we were ‘political smugglers’. I think they more likely expected we had vodka, salami or something like that on our backs – and they were surprised when they found literature […].”.

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Vlastimil Třešňák (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Vlastimil Třešňák (*1950)

“They drove me out with harsh interrogations. The waste of time, exhaustion, fear, hopelessness. (…) They arrested and beat me whenever they wished and could. It was their job description. Comrade Kafka and another StB officer I didn’t know carried it out, pissed drunk. When comrade Kafka beat me in 1981 and I collapsed Kafka ran through another office to the corridor for a doctor. In the neighbouring office they were actually interrogating my good friend Pavel Brunnhofer. Banned music and unofficial exhibitions took place in his apartment and P.B. and I were agreed that we’d never emigrate, we’d never leave. And now he sees me from the office next door lying on the ground, clearly not pretending, and when I came to he said to me: Get out of here!”

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Branislav Tvarožek (*1925)

“The worst thing about being locked up was that from your free life they suddenly put you in a two-and-a-half metre by one-and-a-half metre cell where you have to be without all the things that you were used to. The arrest was all the worse for coming after liberation, when life was gaining momentum, everybody was doing their best, doing what they could.”

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UKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Milan Uhde

Milan Uhde (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Milan Uhde (*1936)

Host was banned in 1970 and Uhde himself was officially banned in 1972. Two years later the Divadlo Husa na provázku theatre directors Peter Scherhaufer and Zdeněk Pospíšil offered him incognito work in the form of dramatisations of well-known literary works: Párala’s Professional Woman, Mrštík’s A May Fairytale and Olbracht’s Nikola Šuhaj, Bandit; under the title Ballad for a Bandit, the latter became one of the theatre’s most successful productions and in musical film form became a virtual cult – without anybody knowing who had written the libretto.

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Miroslav Vodrážka / Jaroslav Vrbenský

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Miroslav Vodřážka (*1954)

“A totally screwed-up situation ensued, because they employed insulin treatment on me. Today that ‘scientific’ method is banned, but they strap you to a bed and, via injections, you get ever increasing doses of insulin in your body […]. That causes hypoglycemic coma accompanied by hallucinations, thrashing about, cramps, etc. […].”

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Jaroslav Vrbenský (*1932)

“My imprisonment affected my mother’s psychological state and health most severely. But my time in jail also had its upsides. I would never have met so many exceptional people.”

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WKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

František Wiendl

František Wiendl (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

František Wiendl (*1923)

“When father was arrested, his acquaintance, who wanted to be brought to the West, came to us. Apparently father had agreed with his friend in Cologne that he would assist people in escaping in this way. But now, after father’s arrest, it was a new situation. I let him sleep over and in the morning Josef Touš, who was a train conductor, tried to guide him. But Schneider evidently didn’t keep his nerve and didn’t follow orders, so Touš refused to take responsibility. So I decided I’d take him myself.”

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František Wiendl guided refugees across the border in Šumava. Pictured in front of the memorial to the victims of communism at Petřín in Prague.

ZKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Ján Zeman / Vladislav Žitňák / Bohumil Zhof

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Ján Zeman (*1923)

“I don’t regret what happened. I regard all the things I did as my civic duty,” he said later. “Fourteen and a half years in jail at a young age was a major loss. But neither I nor my wife regretted it. I’m sad today. I was born in Czechoslovakia and I’ll die a Czechoslovak […]”

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Vladislav Žitňák (*1932)

“Every day I was interrogated. My questioner was about six years older. It took four or five months and then we began speaking about all kinds of things. After five months I read what he’d written and began correcting the mistakes. Then he informed me there was a stool pigeon close to me. He told me not to talk tripe if I was with anybody in the cell…”

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Bohumil Zhof (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

Bohumil Zhof (*1928)

“They put these boots on your feet when you were in your socks or bare feet. I don’t know exactly. They shoved them on me and when they turned on the current it felt like my feet would be ripped off. This was the first day and they didn’t even know what some of our names were. But they showed what they had on us. If you haven’t undergone it, you can’t comprehend it. The electric current was the worst. They had a transformer and turned the voltage up or down. They just said, Turn it up so he remembers. It lifted you up, twisted you, and then you fell to the ground. The room was full. There were people lying on the ground.”

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The Faces of Resistance (2012) by Pavel HrochKnihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library)

The project could be expanded in the future with portraits and stories of other witnesses.

If you know about a story that should not be missed, contact us at info@vaclavhavel-library.org.

Credits: Story

We would like to thank Mr. Freud Arias-King without whose support the project The Faces of Resistance could not be realized.

Author of the project and photographer: Pavel Hroch
Authors of texts: Adam Drda, Luděk Navara, Jiří Peňás, Jan Horník
Author of the online exhibition: Eva Csémyová
Proofreading: Michaela Šmejkalová
Translation:: Ian Willoughby

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions (listed below) who have supplied the content.
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