Ladislav Krejza

* 1934

  • “I was arrested in 1967, the year 1956 was a period, when the Hungarian events took place and the first awakening of opposition powers in Poland grew and our secret police became angry. We were waiting something similar happens here too and thought it would be milder and when the ice melts, which happened only later in 1968, so we should be ready. So a group of young social democrats got together and we worked out a program of requirements and our political objectives in various parts of social life. There was a confident of the secret police amongst us, a man with a decent reputation with an academic education and two degrees. So the secret police was well informed and gradually they locked us all up in prison.”

  • “When I got to a lager, so Jan Krombholz, who was a kind of spiritus agens, an active spirit in the Catholic section, said: ‚If you got any solid literature, I got a good black contacts, we can smuggle it here through the shaft.‘ He wrote a letter home to his mum, I still keep it somewhere. I had to be a stiffly. He smuggled it, his sister sent it to our mum and she then delivered the book, she found after the secret police search to the sister of Mrs. Březinové in Vinohrady. Someone picked it up there and got it to lager.”

  • “Then the normalisation came, Husák´s regime and it was worse. So we tried to do something at least. In 1970 we did a cultural program for the members and invited guests in a former factory club of Jan Šverma mine, that is the Gothic house in Chomutov square, where there are two beautiful halls on the first floor, for about 40–50 people, and there we had the poetry evening dedicated to Jan Zahradníček.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    V Jirkově, 09.11.2003

    (audio)
    duration: 03:24:51
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    V Chomutově, 13.01.2016

    (audio)
    duration: 49:12
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When you fear, you fear. There is no such obligation as to be brave.

Ladislav Krejza - portrait
Ladislav Krejza - portrait
photo: http://chomutovsky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/kadansti-vzdali-hold-obetem-rudeho-rezimu-20130626.html

Ladislav Krejza was born on June 27, 1934 in Košice in a patriotic family. With his family he moved to Louny in 1938 and in 1945 to Chomutov, where he finished a secondary level education. Then he began working in ironworks in Most, where he was active until arresting in 1957. As a member of the Czechoslovak People´s Party he was sentenced for high-treason to serve fifteen years in prison; he served the sentence mostly in a prison camp in Bytíz near Příbram, where he participated in a Catholic event. After amnesty release in 1960 he joined an active civil life and with his party colleagues organised cultural programs that were meant to present catholic thinkers and literature writers. During the Velvet revolution he was active as a deputy chairman of a regional administration of the Czechoslovak People´s Party and a spokesman of the strike committee of the Chomutov ironworks; he mainly aimed at seamless handover of power. Following the revolution, he became a member of the board of the Trade union KOVO and also held a position of a chairman of the Chomutov ironworks unions.