It was unacceptable, this is not what socialism looks like
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Jiří Bušek was born on 14 June 1949 in Cheb. His childhood was marked by the absence of his father, Vratislav Bušek, who was arrested in Hazlov in 1949 and accused of guiding people over the border as part of a secret State Security operation. The first time he saw his father was during a visit to prison. His father was sentenced to 20 years. After primary school he graduated from secondary textile technical school in Aš and worked as a vocational training master. Later, he took a job as a printer in a dyeing plant in Krásná. In 1975 he became seriously ill and worked as a librarian in a small branch. In the second half of the 1970s he started working in the Aš Museum, where he built a textile exhibition. When he joined the museum, a new world opened up for him - he prepared exhibitions of important artists, including Mikuláš Medek, and participated in photographic workshops documenting the reality of socialism. During his thirty years at the museum, he was instrumental in the creation of many exhibitions and contributed significantly to building Europe’s largest collection of strike gloves. In the 1980s he was instrumental in founding the Society of Conciliation Crosses. During the Velvet Revolution he was actively involved in the creation of the Civic Forum. In 1991 he and his wife started a business and after eleven years he retired. His work and legacy remain on display at the Aš Museum to this day. At the time of the recording, in 2025, he and his wife lived in Aš.
