Mgr. Jan Breník

* 1945

  • "So my childhood was not at all excellent. At home we did not have much money. In the end, it turned out that my mother, who was quite tired from giving births seven times and also working at home, because we had our own villa and a rather large garden, where there were many fruit trees and my father took care of them very carefully and taught us to do the same, so she had to go to work. And since she was a trained teacher, of course she went to teach. And she was looking for a place and found it only in Kralupy nad Vltavou. There she then taught at the elementary level, first to fifth grade. This, of course, made our situation at home even more complicated, but it wasn't completely harmful, because by the fact that my brother and I had to do more housework, it was ultimately to our benefit for the rest of our lives."

  • "So I was faced with the decision of what to do next. Not a single industrial application came out, the third application was already useless because it was impossible to meet the deadline. So the "family council" met and there was an offer either from my oldest brother to Otrokovice, to Moravan, or from my brother-in-law, my sister Milena's husband, to Ostrava, to Nová Huť. To attend a proffesional training. And since nothing was paid at the Nová Huť school and boarding school, economic reasons of course played a role and I found myself in Ostrava at the age of 14. It was a terrible city for me, dirty, unsympathetic, and as a native of Prague, I didn't have a bed of roses here at the school, in our class, but I gradually came to terms with it and graduated."

  • "Then, of course, August 21 was the shock. I won't forget that either. I was working the night shift and somehow around midnight we got a message on the track radio that we had been occupied by occupation troops. So we reacted immediately and stopped production in protest. And we were extremely disappointed, extremely embittered, even angry. We went out of the hall, and when we saw that not only our hall, but all the others around the contidrate line were surrounded by howitzers and tanks and armored personnel carriers, you may or may not be able to imagine how we felt."

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    Ostrava, 09.11.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:06:01
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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My wife brought me to God and for that I remain extremely grateful

Jan Breník at the age of 15
Jan Breník at the age of 15
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jan Breník was born on December 31, 1945 in Prague. He spent his childhood in Roztoky near Prague with his parents and three siblings. The family’s life was affected by the poor health of the father. He graduated from primary school in 1960, then for political reasons he did not get into secondary school and trained at Nová Huť in Ostrava. After his apprenticeship, he worked in several professions in a general rolling mill on the contidrate line. In 1970, he married his wife Ludmila and together they raised five daughters. In 1979, he finished his evening studies at the industrial school with a high school diploma and started working in a medium-volume rolling mill. In the 1980s, he became the chairman of the local organization of the Czechoslovak People’s Party in Ostrava-Mariánské Hory. In autumn 1989, he became a member of the coordination center of the Civic Forum in Ostrava. In 1990, he became a co-opted deputy mayor of the ONV in Ostrava 1. In 2001, he began studying at the Cyril Methodist Theological Faculty of the Palacký University in Olomouc and was ordained a deacon in 2006. He then served at the parish in Mariánské Hory. In 2021 he lived in Ostrava.