Ivan Kožíšek

photo: ISTR
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Ivan Kožíšek was born in Česká Kamenice on 22 September 1948. He grew up in the former Sudetenland in the Šluknov region. As a child, he saw the step-by-step destruction of local farms after the deported Sudeten Germans and kulaks. After primary school, Ivan Kožíšek first attended an industrial apprenticeship and before completed a coop farm apprenticeship before military service. His father was a dyed-in-the-wool communist and Ivan Kožíšek had disputes with him from the moment he became interested in politics. He entered army service in 1968, serving as a tank technician. He witnessed the Warsaw Pact invasion in August first hand. At his garrison in Holýšov, it seemed that there might be armed resistance for the first fortnight after the occupation. When everything fizzled out, Kožíšek decided that since he could not fulfill his military oath and defend his country with a weapon in his hand, he would refuse to continue serving as a soldier. He was sent to an insane asylum for a month and then released to go home. The August 1968 occupation marked a major turning point for him. He moved to Prague for a period of time, he also lived around the Jizerské Mountains as well as elsewhere. He held countless jobs, worked on construction sites, in the forests, did roof insulation. He took any job that provided him with a place to stay. When he landed in Prague again for about three years, he worked on the construction of the Strahov university dorms. Even before Charter 77, he met the members of the emerging underground in Prague pubs. Finally, he moved to Rumburk in the mid-1970s. Vladimír Muzička came to Rumburk in the winter of 1977 and brought the text of the Charter. Kožíšek and his future wife Martina immediately figured that the text naturally corresponded to their way of life and signed the Charter 77 declaration. Kožíšek did not lose his job because he was working at the TOS state-owned enterprise TOS unloading wagons. His wife lost her library job only after several years because her signature was not publicised for a long time. At home, the couple disseminated Infoch bulletins, books, published the Rumburk samizdat, and helped other dissidents. In addition to interrogation summoning and threats, the State Security also searched their home at night. Fortunately, they never came when the books they were copying were spread all over the house. Also thanks to a clever hiding place for the writings in an old sofa in the attic, the StB never found anything of importance. When the Charter signatory and dissident Rudolf Battěk was sentenced to more than seven years, Kožíšek wrote an open letter to President Gustáv Husák in 1981, requesting his release and collecting signatures in the local pub. As a result, he was arrested on 31 August 1981 for approving a crime. He spent his pre-trial detention in Litoměřice. Finally, he was charged with assaulting a state authority and a social organisation under section 154(2) of the Criminal Code and sentenced in December 1981 to seven months’ imprisonment without parole in a 1st category of penitentiary. He served his sentence in Nové Sedlo where he worked on railway construction sites. After returning from prison, State Security officers threatened the Kožíšek family suggesting that something might happen to their little children, so Ivan Kožíšek virtually did not let them out of his sight out of fear for about two years. He found work as a scrap metal cutter, also filling in for bricklayers and oven builders. In 1989, Kožíšek went on trial for the second time for laying flowers to the statue of the “Unconquered” in Rumburk on the 21 August anniversary. The trial dragged on until the Velvet Revolution, and the charges were dropped after 17 November 1989. Ivan Kožíšek spent 17 November working in the forest. On his return to Rumburk, he called a large demonstration to the local square. People filled the square and the communists in Rumburk lost ground. After the revolution, he became involved in the local council for a while, but soon became bitterly disappointed with the way things were going and withdrew from public life. In 2007, he began to work as an amateur photographer. Ivan Kožíšek died on 20 September 2014. In 2012, he received an award as a participant in the anti-communist resistance, and in 2018 the ÚSTR Award for Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights in memoriam.