Jan Karas

* 1937

  • "That's where I came. I had to strip naked. They took my things. I put on the prison clothes, the uniform. They blindfolded me again. They started spinning me in all kinds of ways. [Hands] on the railing and on the cell. I was in the cell, you know I remember because we had a house number - also the number 368. I heard the clock ticking in Karlovy Vary at the church. The clock always struck there and when it struck. The so-called prison calendar was made there. I already looked at what was in front of me there. So always, when I was arrested, I wrote there, scratched the date, the day on the wall and then dashes were made. Like this on the wall. The first day one dash, the second. When there were six dashes. The seventh was done over, that was a week."

  • "Then they brought someone to me - I don't know if it was a confidant, because they did it in such a way that, for example, when I didn't want to testify, they put someone else as a prisoner and he asked: 'I'm here for this and this. What are you here for?' This is how they talked to each other. I then asked when we were in Pilsen, and it was supposed to be a certain Dobrovský, it was supposed to be a doctor. He was there with me for about two weeks. So I asked about that name. We were in the confederation of political prisoners, and they had lists, so I asked him if that name was on there somewhere, because everyone who was locked up, it was K 231. He said: 'There is no such name there.' So I thought that it might have been a confidant placed in that cell with me."

  • "When the trial took place, we were excluded from the JZD, because my father was on trial, I was on trial, my brother was abroad, so we were judged by the communists in that Munich. That's how our parents excluded them. They excluded them by giving us three cows; we had to put horses there, everything - it was machines and what we had for farming and they didn't give us anything, just the cows and they were still malnourished. And no feeding stuff, nothing."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    v Mariánských Lázních, 11.04.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:22:03
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Judged for listening to the radio

Jan Karas (en)
Jan Karas (en)
photo: projekt Příběhy našich sousedů 2018/2019

Jan Karas was born on June 24, 1937 in Pičín near Příbram. After the end of the war, the family moved to Munich near Mariánské Lázně, where they settled and worked as farmers. He started going to school in 1943 – first in Pičín, after moving to the border, then in Munich and later in Mariánské Lázně. In 1951, his parents had to “voluntarily” join the unified agricultural cooperative (JZD). After completing elementary school, he began studying mining in 1951, where he remained until his first arrest. Because of the information, he was convicted in 1953 for distributing leaflets. After his release, he did not enjoy his freedom for long. Again, on the basis of information, he was sentenced to four months for listening to Free Europe. On appeal, they reduced his sentence to one month. He was expelled from JZD. In 1954 he went to Mariánské Lázně, where he worked as a stoker, handyman and kitchen attendant. He received one salary for three functions, the base was CZK 720. He also met his wife, started a family. In 1959 - 1996 he worked at ČSAD. Jan Karas also traveled a lot, he liked the Czech Republic the most, according to him it is the most beautiful country in the world. As a tourist, he was in Sochi, Russia, Siberia and Baikal twice. He also traveled the entire Balkans, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. To this day (2019) he lives in Mariánské Lázně.