Ladislav Jeník

“I recall it as if it were today. My class teacher’s name was Mütter, a German by origin. By the beginning of the fourth grade of high school they brought in the so-called Anti-charter, and I was the only non-member of the Socialist Union of Youth in the whole school. Our class chief was walking around with it and I told him: ‘I’m not signing it.’ It circulated around the class and when the break was over, Mütter came in and asked the class chief: ‘Do you have the signatures?’ – ‘Yes I do.’ – ‘Ok, give it to me.’ It was a farce because he was leaving already and then suddenly his head appeared in the door again and he asked the chief: ‘Had Jeník signed?!’ And he replied: ‘No, Jeník hadn’t!’ Two minutes later I was at the headmaster’s office. We had a crazy Bolshevik as headmaster. His name was Levar and he died in 1977 but his replacement was all the same.”

“I’ve changed jobs about five times. I was walking around Ostrava and nobody wanted to hire me. Then I received a written summons to the secret police station by Cpt. Vojvodič. He told me: ‘Either you sign up here to work at a coal mine for ten years or we will charge you with social parasitism and you’ll get four years in prison.’ Or maybe he said five. I feared working at a mine and didn’t want to go for it. Eventually, I said ‘alright’ as he told me straight: ‘You see, you don’t really have a choice. We will make sure that they won’t hire you anywhere and if they did, they will fire you immediately. So either you sign up for ten years at a mine or we’ll charge you.’ The second or third day I went to the mine Rudý říjen in Ostrava Heřmanice, passing by the prison. There they had already known about me. So I went to the human resources where I received the highest of honors, becoming a member of the mining class.”