Georg Kebrle

* 1938

  • “On August 26, 1968, I decided that I would simply leave. We went by train and in Cheb I experienced something intense. We arrived to Cheb and an officer of the Border Guard came in. He asked: ‘Your documents, please.’ Some people only had identity cards. He asked them: ‘Do you have at least something? An identity card, at least?’ They had them. Everything went smoothly without any thorough checks. The border guards were very careful so that some criminals would not make use of the situation and leave the country together with this mass of people. So they wanted to see some personal document at least. When the train moved, the border guards, including this officer, were standing there. I don’t know what his fate was in the normalization era, because we were calling at them from all the train’s windows: ‘See you in free Czechoslovakia!’ (At the train station - ed.’s note) a salesman was walking on the platform and calling: ‘Hot sausages!’ And so we went. As one says, I felt my ass tighten when we arrived to the border and there were three Russian tanks standing there. We saw them and I thought: ‘Oh my, this is the end. They will now made us get out of the train and who knows what they will do to us and where they will take us.’ But the Russian tanks did not notice us at all. People were celebrating so much when the train finally started moving. We arrived to the first station beyond Cheb on the German side of the border. Germans came in and they said: ‘Eure Visen, bitte. The people who do not have a visa, please get off the train.’ Nearly all the people got off the train. They all had only exit permits or ID cards. That was on August 26, and the possibility (to emigrate - ed.’s note) was really there.”

  • “I had problems with communists all the time, and it culminated in my refusal to agree with the so-called Declaration of Workers Condemning Charter 77. A gathering of workers was held (in the Škoda factory – ed.’s note), it was probably done in all workplaces at that time. Everybody voted in favour of the declaration. ‘Who is against?’ And so I raised my hand. ‘Why?’ I said that I did not know Charter 77 (which was true, I had no idea what was written in there), and therefore I could not condemn something which I did not know. ‘But the Rudé Právo newspaper already wrote about it.’ In reply to this I told that comrade that I did not take seriously whatever some scribbler wrote in the Rudé Právo newspaper... That was terribly impudent.”

  • “I was allowed to move from Czechoslovakia to Austria with my wife and my son who was fifteen years old at that time, under the condition that I would renounce my Czechoslovak citizenship and all claims against the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. We left the country on September 10, 1980, as people without a nationality, just as it was written in the document which served as an identity card for us: ‘Person of undefined citizenship, temporarily staying in the territory of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.’ We received political asylum in Austria already at the end of October 1980, and then in 1987 we received Austrian citizenship.”

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    Plzeň, 13.04.2017

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Never act against your own conviction

Georg Kebrle
Georg Kebrle
photo: archiv pamětníka

Georg Kebrle was born as Jiří Kebrle on November 19, 1938 in Pilsen. His father František Kebrle worked as a teacher at schools for the Czech minority in the Domažlice region, and later he and his wife lived in Nýřany. The town became part of Germany after the Munich Agreement and Jiří’s father, who was an official of the Social Democratic Party, was ordered by the authorities to leave the Reich’s territory. With his pregnant wife they moved to their parents’ house in the village Líně near Pilsen and later they lived in Pilsen. Jiří’s father began working as a district education inspector in Stříbro in 1946. His family, into which a younger son and a daughter were meanwhile born, followed him there. Firmly believing in principles of Social Democracy, Jiří’s father did not agree with the union of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party in June 1948 and he continued maintaining contacts with his friends, fellow members of the Social Democratic Party. In 1949, the State Security Police (StB) arrested him for this and the State Court in Prague sentenced him to twelve years of jail with increased supervision based on Act No. 231/1948. He was interned in labor camps in the Jáchymov region and in the prison in Leopoldov. Jiří’s father was released only in 1959. The persecution of the family continued, and in 1951, the Kebrle family were evicted from Stříbro on grounds of being politically untrustworthy persons. The mother was not allowed to live with the children in their own house in Nýřany, and they stayed in a devastated house in Heřmanova Huť instead. As a son of a political prisoner, Jiří was not allowed to study. He apprenticed as an electric machine fitter in the Škoda factory in Pilsen, and then he was employed as a worker in various factories and also as a miner in the Ostrava region. Based on his personal profile, he was not allowed to serve in a paratrooper unit while doing his military service, and although he was already an experienced paratrooper, he instead had to serve as a telephone operator-communications operator in Chotusice near Čáslav. Based on his own experience as well as on what he had heard from his father about the conditions in the labour camps, Jiří became a convinced anti-communist. In 1963 he faced criminal prosecution for sedition, when co-workers from the Škoda factory informed upon him that he spoke critically of the political regime. The prosecution was eventually stopped by the procurator. During the political thaw in the period of the Prague Spring, Jiří was actively involved in the Czechoslovak Socialist Party. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968 he emigrated to Germany. However since he was unable to arrange for his wife and little son to follow him there, he used the opportunity for amnesty in 1973 and he returned to Czechoslovakia to his family. He again worked as a worker and miner in various companies and he faced trouble in his workplace for his political views again. He was under surveillance and interrogated by the State Security Police. In 1979 Jiří and his wife therefore decided to apply for permission to emigrate. They were granted exit visas and in September 1980 they left for Austria where they received political asylum and subsequently Austrian citizenship in 1987. Jiří became a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party in exile, and in 1983 he was even elected into the central committee of this exile Party. After the Velvet Revolution he contributed to the restoration of the Social Democratic Party in Czechoslovakia, but soon after he discovered that their views differed. He subsequently co-founded the Association of Social Democrats together with Rudolf Battěk, but the Party did not manage to take root at the Czech political scene. At present he lives in Wels in Austria.