JUDr. Jan Líman

* 1936

  • “The director was fired, he had to go to the mine too, doctor Jahoda… a very shrewd man, good guy. And they closed the school and made a boarding school out of it - for those children whose parents were abroad, working as diplomats of any kind. They had to leave their children here so they would not stay in the West. Their children stayed there, in the boarding school. The school was closed completely later, they moved it to Mariánské lázně, thus the school of Poděbrady ceased to exist. A college of electrical engineering was there later, there at the palace. We used to have that palace just for ourselves, the school was there, that boarding school. It was such a beautiful living, beautiful environment, the whole palace. The unified school was over… the primary school was up the fourth grade, it was the year of 1951. My dad was in prison at that time and so they did not let me go to school anymore. I graduated with honours, yet it was recommended to me that I should study to become a miner or a metallurgist.

  • “It was 1950, and my father was arrested. He had spent a year, well, more than a year, in pre-trial detention – firstly in solitary confinement in Litoměřice, where he spent almost a year, and at Pankrác then. He was sentenced to eight years by the state court in 1952. I am not sure about what paragraphs was it based on. Well, when I asked the presidential office to remit his sentence, I was told that he was especially dangerous, active somehow… that the remit was not possible… that’s what is in those documents that I have brought. The request was rejected. Litoměřice for some time, and Pankrác then. Then convicted and working in a labour camp, somewhere in Kladno. They moved to, or he was transferred to the shaft located in Rtyně, in the Podkrkonoří Region. He spent the rest of his sentence there. And they started to mine uranium there later. That was the Podkrkonoší Region, around Rtyně in Podkrkonoší.”

  • “I started in the first grade in 1947. It was organized as some kind of a college, comparable to the colleges you can find in Oxford and Cambridge. The founder, doctor Jahoda, visited Oxford after the war and he wanted to create something similar in Poděbrady. That was the College of Jiří of Poděbrady (Kolej Jiřího z Poděbrad). It was treaded as a scout grammar school too back then. I lived there in a room, we used to be around four to five (boys) sharing a room and, as scouts, a counsel was assigned to us, some of the older boys. And my counsellor was Miloš Forman, and he became a very good friend of mine. In our room, there used to be: Pavel Fierlinger – a nephew of the Prime Minister Zdeněk Fierlinger, Mario Klemens – currently the principal conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, Milan Jirásek – he is a colonel today, a doctor in Střešovice, and a chairman of the Czech Olympic Committee. Well, and Vašek Havel was the main one. So I had slept in that room for three years. We were really good friends. Vašek was a nice boy, a friend. Some family relations… he was from a wealthy family, of course… that did not matter at all. As boys, we were on the same level. So, any parents’ ties or blustering of any kind was completely out of question.”

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    Praha, 06.03.2020

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The Nazi took his mother away when he most needed her. When he needed his father, the Communist took him away from him as well.

Jan Líman
Jan Líman
photo: Archive of the witness

Jan Líman was born on February 20, 1936, in Mladá Boleslav. His father, Jan Líman, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Army that he was forced to leave twice during his career. The first time after the Nazi occupation in 1939, and then after the Communist coup in 1948. His mother, Helena Líman, was of a Jewish origin, but the mixed marriage had protected her against transportation to a concentration camp for some time. However, the Límans divorced, holding a naive belief that they could have saved their son from the transport. Helena Líman ended up in a Terezín’s ghetto, where she had lived until the end of the War; meanwhile, her parents and brother died in Auschwitz. It was the Málek’s family living in Borek who started to take care of then eight years old Jan Líman, a situation that most likely enabled him to escape the attention of the protectorate officers. In 1947, Jan Líman enrolled at the perennial grammar school – Grammar School of Jiřího z Poděbrad – where children from the persecuted families took precedence during the admission process. However, some changes had taken place there following the communist coup, and the school ceased to exist in 1953. Jan Líman’s father discharged from the army due to his disapproval of the new political establishment and started to work as a tutor of the mining youth. He was arrested by the State Security a year after. The reason behind it was the alleged negative effect he had had on the mining apprentices, in whom he had allegedly aroused compassion for political prisoners, whom he supported himself. Jan Líman Sn. was sentenced to eight years, most of which he spent in the labour-educational camp in Tmavý Důl located in Rtyn in the Podkrkonoší Region. His sentence bore a significant effect on his son’s life, as it went hand in hand with Jan’s problems to graduate and finding a job later. It was not until 1968 that he was able to apply for the entrance exams at the Faculty of Law of the Charles University. He was accepted and graduated in 1974 with a doctoral degree. After finishing his studies, he worked as a business lawyer. He lives in Teplice.