“So, we got the copying machine in the House of Public Enlightenment rolling straight away and started printing all kinds of leaflets. In fact, it was the same place where we printed them again in 1989. And we distributed the leaflets around the villages, scattering them around and putting them up. In our part of the country, there were mostly Polish soldiers. We ended up getting arrested, somewhere in the winding roads of the Orlické Mountains. It’s quite an unpleasant experience, getting pulled out of the car and stood alongside the road. We didn’t have to put our hands up or anything, but they kept nudging us in the back with the machine guns. They raided the whole car, threw all of our leaflets out, but the curious thing was, they gave us the leaflets of the party they had arrested before us. Those were the Polish soldiers.”
“This didn’t happen only in Česká Třebová, but I can see it in front of my eyes until today. What horror it was for a little boy like me. Many people turned away in shame, but many on the contrary revelled in the sight of the man who they used to buy fabrics from and, naturally, pay him for them, which in their eyes had made him a ‘new rich man’. The ideology is awful. I can still see the horror if it – the terrible humiliation of the man sat in his own shop window. He was staring at the passers-by with empty eyes. He couldn’t even ask for anything. I can still see him, sat amidst his bolts of fabric, which had been confiscated from him. Every shop has some stocks to satisfy the customers with, but they said he had concealed the goods. I don’t know the full story of it, but I still remember the horrifying experience of watching a humiliated human being sat in a water tank.”
“Take Russia, what is going on there nowadays; that’s exactly the same. The communists have always excelled in brainwashing. I have mixed memories of that period. As a former businessman, my father was persecuted by the communists as of 1948, but another reason for his persecution was his membership in the People’s Party. After 1945, he represented the People’s Party in what was called the national committee. He witnessed the atrocities committed by the various red militias against for example the German inhabitants. There were death marches similar to the one in Brno area. Dad didn’t approve of how they were being treated and revolted against it, and the communist authorities then punished him for his democratic and just attitude, for the way he didn’t want innocent people to suffer, after 1948. And this was despite the fact that my father was generally quite open-minded. He had to give up his business briefly during the war, got a job at a railway station and then he returned to it. And then, after 1945, he actually helped them establish the nationalised meat-processing company ‘Masna’. My dad was good with numbers, he was a clever economist and hence became a clerk for about a year. And that’s what cost him dearly. At the time, they launched the campaign ’70.000 office workers into industry’, which meant that office workers became factory workers. And that was my father’s fate, too. He was an office worker for only a year, and then he became a turner and manufactured some details for water taps at a plumbing-fixture factory."
Alexandr Gregar was born on November 25, 1943, in Litomyšl. His parents had a small butcher’s shop in Česká Třebová, where Alexandr Gregar spent his childhood and youth. After the coup of 1948, his parents’ business was confiscated by the communist authorities. Initially, his father was employed at the national meat-processing company “Masna”. Following a state-run campaign entitled “70.000 clerks into industry”, he then spent his entire life working as a turner at a plumbing-fixture factory. His elder brother Milan spent his military years in the infamous AEC unit (Auxiliary Engineering Corps) in Ostrava. Due to his politically unfavourable background, Gregar struggled to enter both secondary school and university. In the end, he graduated from a comprehensive secondary school in Česká Třebová. From the age of five, he had been involved in community theatre, therefore applied for DAMU (the Academy for Performing Arts) after graduation. He was not accepted, hence continued his professional training at a ČKD (Českomoravská Kolben-Daněk mechanical-engineering company) vocational school in Choceň and became a machine fitter. Eventually, thanks to references provided by his school, he was accepted to the newly established Teacher-Training Institute in Pardubice, where he specialised in Czech, History, and Social Sciences. The Institute was later made part of Charles University’s teacher-training faculty based in Hradec Králové. After graduation and compulsory military service, he returned to the vocational school in Choceň as a teacher. In 1968, he started working as an amateur-theatre methodology instructor at the House of Public Enlightenment in Ústí nad Orlicí. In 1969, he was forced to resign from this post because of his political convictions; he was banned from teaching and struggled to find a job. Eventually, he got a job in the textile-factory Primona’s advertising department. All his life, he has been involved in community theatre both as an actor and a director. His plays have been repeatedly shown at Jirásek’s Hronov, the best-known Czech community-theatre festival. In 1989, Gregar took an active part in the Velvet Revolution and held several posts in the Civic Forum’s regional branches. Later he joined the ODA (Civic Democratic Alliance). Between 1990-1995, he was the head of the cultural department at the district government in Ústí nad Orlicí. Between 1995-2005, he was the head of the cultural department in the Hradec Králové local government. He has taught at Hradec Králové University and DAMU. At the age of seventy, he defended his dissertation at DAMU. In 2022, he was still writing about, and involved in, the theatre. He has been married twice and has two daughters from the first marriage. In 2022, he was living in Hradec Králové.
