Jiří Malášek

* 1938

  • „I have to tell you that this is one of the memories that is incredibly difficult for me. The four of us were alone at home on December 22, 1948. Mother was shopping and father was due to return early from work. He didn't come back. A phone call at five o'clock, I picked up the phone and my father said, 'Go to my office and throw all the papers on the table in the fireplace.' I did so, and immediately five guys in leather coats came upstairs with my father, with rifles on their shoulders, or maybe they were machine guns. And the first thing they did was to go to the study by the fireplace, and they said: 'So we came too late, it was already burning here.' Then they took my father away and we didn't see him again.“

  • „And that was perhaps my motivation for saying: 'I can't raise my children in this country.' Of course it is possible. Of course, my mother raised us this way, but I felt that my children should not live the youth we did. Maybe they should have experienced it like I did. However, my wife and I knew we would run away. We escaped, and we got to Vienna. It too had its own special mission. Archbishop Beran was interned in Mukařov and we went to visit him there, and we knew we would escape. We asked him for his blessing on the journey we were given. He asked us if we would take something with us. He gave us a letter which we took to the Vatican and which we were to deliver to the Nunciature in Vienna. Thank God it was successful. If we got caught with it, I don't know.“

  • „I have to say it was tricky. I am talking about 1968 and 1969, when the Olympics were being prepared in Munich. And suddenly there was a theme in Munich: 'Here will be the Olympics, and here is Free Europe, which destroys peaceful coexistence.' At that time, the mayor of Munich was Jochen Vogel, who said two years before the Olympics that this nonsense must go away, because we don't want it here at the Olympics . But the opposite was true when the Olympics were on, we were like pikes in a pond. We had so many connections and options... It was never an official policy. Everyone realised that Free Europe, which tries to convey information about the West twenty hours a day, that information is the most important thing the nation needs. And that was also the reason why Free Europe was founded, to act against Soviet communist propaganda. If the transmission of information stopped, the nation would be lost.“

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 21.11.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:10:58
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 12.12.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:32:03
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Believe in yourself and do what you think is right

Archive photo of Jiří Malášek
Archive photo of Jiří Malášek
photo: archive of Jiří Malášek

Jiří Malášek was born on August 1, 1938 in Olomouc. Later, the family moved to Brno, where the father Jiří Malášek Sr. worked as a high school professor. In 1947, the family moved to Prague, where the father worked as a councillor at the Ministry of Education. In December 1948, he was arrested and later sentenced to sixteen years. The children were not spared from dossier problems. Jiří trained as a toolmaker and later graduated from a higher technical school. In 1964 he emigrated together with his wife Naďa to Vienna, from where they later moved to Munich. After rough beginnings, Jiří Malášek got a job at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 1965, where he established himself as an announcer and later as an editor. In 1968, Jiří’s parents and eldest sister immigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany. In exile, Jiří Malášek was also involved in the lay Catholic association Opus Bonum. He was friends with abbot Anastáz Opask. At Free Europe, his close colleagues and friends included, for example, the singer-songwriter Karel Kryl and the poet and lyricist Jan Schneider. He left Free Europe in 1994 and the following year founded the manufacturing companies Gemi and Westfalia in Hustopeč and then Linden and Cromtryck in Moravia. Since 2016, he has lived permanently in Prague with his wife.