A silent witness of the times who recorded illegal concerts and distributed samizdat
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Miroslav Drábek was born on November 25, 1964 in Ostrov nad Ohří. His mother Anna was a postal clerk, his father Miloslav worked at a petrol station. He spent his carefree childhood in the family house near the railway station in Ostrov. At the age of four he suffered hepatitis and was hospitalized in the infectious diseases ward. During an ambulance ride in August 1968, he watched tanks of the Warsaw Pact troops passing by from the window. Already in primary school, thanks to his class teacher, he came into contact with banned literature. Reading books greatly influenced his future direction in life. He graduated from the secondary industrial school in Ostrov nad Ohří, where harsh communist conditions prevailed, and like most of his classmates he joined the SSM. At that time, he became active in photography, and from 1983 he captured concerts of alternative and unauthorised bands, later making sound recordings of them. He archived the recordings and hid them in various places. As a great lover of music, he also travelled to concerts outside his hometown and Czechoslovakia. After graduating he worked for the Czechoslovak Railways as a train driver. By train from Prague he brought samizdat literature, which he copied and further distributed himself. In 1987 he started a five-month military service in Písek. At the end of the 1980s, after a concert of an underground band in Plasy, he was summoned by the State Security for interrogation. After November 17, 1989, he participated in a rally at the Main Post Office in Karlovy Vary. In October 2023, Miroslav Drábek was recognised by the Ministry of Defence as a participant in the resistance against communism. In 2025 he lived alternately in Karlovy Vary and Tenerife.
