"They knew about me. Even when I was on my first enlistment, they said that one soldier here had transgressions and so on. I didn't know they were talking about me. After the induction, the military counter-intelligence started calling me in for questioning. Me and Franta Neumann, a sergeant who had the misdemeanor of running away to join my father in the Foreign Legion as a child on a train. He went to Africa on a chassis to see his father. There he was caught and sent back to Czech. Franta had this little transgression as a kid. The two of us were called in. What was interesting was that the counterintelligence guys were young — soldiers, barely even captains. They were more or less decent. They invited me in: ‘How was your leave? How did you enjoy Prague? What’s the mood like at your unit?’ — questions like that. When it went on longer, I said, ‘Look, comrades, you called me in, so I’ll tell you. I’m proud of my dad. You know he was imprisoned. But I stand by him, and I actually like the army.’ They replied, ‘Comrade, we’re required to call you in once a month like this, so please just come again next time.’ Then it was just a stamp, a signature, and ‘off you go, off you go.’ In the end, it really came down to the people. They were genuinely decent guys."
"I wrote a letter to the District Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia saying that I did not agree with the occupation. That was one thing, and the other thing was that I did a number of exhibitions directly from the occupation that I photographed. For example, in Kadaň, in the shop windows. That was well after 1968. I put up photos and underneath I wrote a poem by Jan Skácel: 'Sometimes it happens that the human soul smells like wet dog hair.' So they sent me a warning. That's the kind of trouble I've been in. And then there was that dad, that counted. I was lucky I wasn't disciplined in 1969. Then Professor Šmok came to me and said: 'Hůrka, you know you're on thin ice, right? Join the SSM [Socialist Youth Union],' which was founded by two directors - Smyczek and Adamec. I said, 'Never!' He said, 'Then at least shut up!'"
"And then we moved to Třešt', where [my father] was again chief of the military administration, the OVS was called. There he became uncomfortable because the Brno military counterintelligence wanted him to denounce even his own friends he was there with, Major Ostrý. To follow them and denounce them. Dad refused, it took a long time. They interrogated him at night, came to our apartment. In Třešt' they broke into our apartment in leather coats and my grandmother, who was a brave woman, grabbed them under the neck and said, 'You bastard, you could be my son!' and slapped him. They searched our whole apartment. Often when I went with my dad to the forest to pick mushrooms, he would take me with him for security reasons, because suddenly the military counter-intelligence officers came out of the thicket and took my dad. And I was being guarded by one of those military 'Gestapo'. I kicked him in the shin, I remember, I was already trained. Eventually, I'll cut it short, Dad was put in a psychiatric ward, after some time they let him out. He was locked in there with a friend, also an officer. They both helped each other mentally. Dad was discharged from the army, fired. I remember the name of the one who fired him, his name was Pavek. Quite a significant name. Dad was dehumanized. They put him in the porter's lodge to put out the lime, with people walking past him. He was not allowed to earn more than 800 crowns a month."
World-class photographer Vratislav Hůrka was born on October 3, 1947 in Teplice as an only child in the marriage of Václav Hůrka, a Czechoslovak army officer, member of the anti-fascist resistance, amateur photographer, and Jiřina Hůrka, née Beranová. His first memories come from the Tachov region, where his father and his unit fought the vérvolfs in 1949. In the 1950s the Hůrkas lived in Třešt’. At that time, Václav Hůrka became inconvenient for the army. After two years of communist repression, Václav Hůrka was thrown out of the army in 1954 and assigned a humiliating job. In 1961, when he finished primary school, the family moved to Kadaň. At that time, Vratislav Hůrka was already taking a lot of photographs. He graduated from the Kadaň secondary grammar school in 1966. He photographed the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Kadaň and in Prague, and shortly afterwards wrote a letter condemning the occupation. In 1969 he was accepted to FAMU, majoring in photography. After graduating in 1974, he received a draft order. From the war in Písek, the witness returned to Kadaň, worked as a politically unreliable on the large-scale surface mine Nástup Tušimice and photographed intensively. A community of artists, dissidents, and signatories of Charter 77 formed in Kadaň, exhibiting together, printing books and samizdat, although they were still under the watchful eye of State Security (StB). In 1981, Vratislav Hůrka participated in the 9x9 photographic exhibition at the monastery in Plasy, which was a worldwide success. He lived through the Velvet Revolution with a camera in his hand. He took photographs in Kadaň and Prague. In 1994 he became a member of the Czech Television news crew as a cameraman. He accompanied presidents and state delegations on foreign trips and met with world celebrities. For 15 years he filmed war conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East. He retired from television in 2009 for health reasons. Since then, he has lived in Turnov, where he moved in 1990, and devoted himself to photography. He has over 25 exhibitions to his credit and his photographs have been purchased by prestigious galleries around the world. He was behind the creation of a number of publications. He was divorced twice and had three children, Tomáš, Petr and Jana. In 2024 he lived in Turnov and was cared for by his daughter Jana. He died on December 12, 2024. The story of the witness was made possible thanks to the support of the town of Turnov.
