Jaroslav Režný

* 1935

  • “So, we little boys started collecting all that ammunition, both used and unused cartridges. I even found a damaged German automatic rifle in the forest behind the hospital; at least I believed it was German – maybe it was other. As a result, I became the commander of the guerrillas for about a week. I had this armband that read, in a wobbly script, ‘Czechoslovak Guerrilla’. I enjoyed playing the game, but it only lasted for about two weeks because boy scouts started marching in Podvesná. They would sing and brother Garlík was blowing a trumpet, a bugle. I loved it so much that I threw my armband away. As for the rifle: a boy in the Sixth Street – we lived on the Eleventh – damaged his hand with some explosive. I don’t know if he lost his fingers completely or was just badly hurt, but our parents and neighbours raided our boys’ belongings and took everything, just everything. They took it all away, and our beautiful game was over.”

  • “How did you get the idea of joining the mountain climbers? Did any of you have any friends among them?” – “The StB knaves actually inspired us. We felt in jeopardy. Jan Slováček came with the idea. In fact, four of us remained active then: Josef Švéda, Milan Mendřec, Petr Nečas and me. You know, this is just my conjecture, but I believe we got out of the trouble with the help of Milan’s parents. He was about to finish high school and they were afraid he might not be allowed to, due to his and our hobby, so difficult to understand for them... Having been in a concentration camp, they both were ardent communists, or at least the father was. They actually got us out of trouble. Josef Švéda and all of us were eventually admitted to universities.”

  • “My foreman came to my drawing board and said, ‘There is someone to see you there.’ The visitor was a complete stranger. He said: ‘When your shift is over your foreman will release you. You will walk twenty steps behind me. Do not stop anywhere.’ He just ordered me to do it. I thought, ‘God, what’s up?’ I thought I knew, though, since Milan had told me. The guy put me in a little chamber. Just a desk, windows blacked out, and a feeble light bulb.” – “Where was that? What was the building? Where did you go?” – “I know. Of course, you know where the theatre is in Zlín. Club Theatre or what it is called. There were some garages downstairs and the StB were upstairs. They took me there, closed the door and locked it. I heard the key in the lock, and then I sat there for so long. It felt endless. Then a man came and stared me in the eyes. I thought, ‘Idiot, I can stand this.’ It was unpleasant. When he had enough staring, he left. The one who took me there came back. A woman sat by a typewriter, and they interrogated me and took down minutes.”

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    Malenovice, 16.07.2018

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    duration: 02:20:34
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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A provocateur got among us, he was called the Jackal

Jaroslav Režný
Jaroslav Režný
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jaroslav Režný was born in Borovo, a small town in the former Yugoslavia, on 16 March 1935. His father, a Baťa representative, met Jaroslav’s mother Milica Borić there. Soon after Jaroslav’s birth, they moved to Zlín where his sister Danuše was born. They lived in the Netherlands briefly around 1938 and returned home after the occupation of the Sudeten. His father was demoted at work after 1948. Jaroslav became a boy scout in 1947 and was still active after the 1950 ban on the boy scouts. He and friends Josef Švéda, Josef Nečas, Ladislav Neckář and Milan Slováček formed their own group and continued meeting under the leadership of Milan Mendřec. Due to a provocation on the part of František Dymák, a post-war boy scout who was a few years older, they became the target of Zlín’s StB in the early 1950s. They joined a mountain climbing club a year later. Jaroslav obtained vocational education as a turner and fitter and served in the military in 1955-1957, then worked at Konstrukce obuvnických strojů (Shoemaking Machinery Engineering). He took distance courses, graduated from a high school of technology, and started studying at the Brno University of Technology in 1960. He did not graduate due to bad health. He spent a major part of his productive age until retirement as the chief designer at Barum Otrokovice.