Ivan Malý

* 1922

  • "You were a Communist during the war, what did you think of Communism?" "That it's a new way. All of us in our group believed that. We had nothing against it." "Nationalising? Communal property?" "Yeah, yeah, we kind of counted on that. At the time this Dušan Sova established the Association for the Cultivation of Medicinal Plants. We considered that to be the first co-op." "How was it after the war, with your political direction? Did you enter the KSČ?" "Yes, sometime about the beginning of June 1945. The whole are of Bohnice, not just the asylum, had this big meeting, and I was immidiately accepted. Our whole group, those who weren't arrested, got together and worked on the thing together." "What did you expect, you were already working at a pharmacy...? Was that a private pharmacy?" "Yes, private. I imagined it just how it worked out. We reckoned that pharmacies would be nationalised." "What did the owner of the pharmacy say to that? What did he say to your opinions?" "Well, he didn't really complain much. He was a Social Democrat. In that time, the Social Democrats joined the Communist Party. He conformed, he was basically a Communist aswell. It was complicated." "Did you hear about the Ribbentrop-Molotv Pact? That SSSR and Germany had divided up Europe between themselves? How did you feel about that as a Communist?" "Generally like a positive thing is how we saw it. A non-aggression pact and some dividing. We weren't worried somehow, we kind of expected it to crumble somehow." "What did you think of the Communist coup in 1948?" "I was enlisted in national service at the time. We were medics and doctors at a school for officers. I was the only Communist of some fifty people. They made fun of us more than anything. You know... They didn't take us seriously."

  • “What‘s bad is that people are undisciplined, that everyone thinks that it means that they can do whatever they want, whatever occurs to them, and if they‘re legally educated in any way, then they even try to somehow prosecute those who complain… Basically to place them on trial. And I don‘t think that‘s at all decent.” (question) “What do you mean? I‘m not sure I really understand you now…” “If someone commits something, how should I say it, some depravity, some dirty trick, and he‘s then willing to, instead of admitting to his mistake, to start making a noise and to place charges on those who are calling him to justice.”

  • "There [in the Gestapo interrogation room at Petschkov palace] they wrung me of information. That was [the potassium cyanide] from the Dříza firm. I told them that the third day or so. That was a small amount, they asked, where did I get the rest. I said: 'Selbstgemacht,' that I had made it myself. So immidiately I got one in the face for lying. They didn't believe me that I had made it myself." "The cyanide? You have to modify potassium cyanide?" "There's still a lot of work to be done, before je get the real thing. You need yellow prussiate of potash, you process that, let it set in a pot, dissolve and clot using essence."

  • "Small resistance groups startedto form and we joined one of them as youngsters. There were only young people in the Bohnice group. We saved friends and relatives from having to go to Germany, to do forced labour. We experimented with how to do that. By starting off some illness or, let's say, some diagnosis. For instance when the person had proteins in their urine, they didbn't have to go. So we tried to fake that. We tried a lot of methods at the start, but in the end we found out that it was easy to get protein into urine. You make a prick - for instance - in your finger, and press a bit of the blood into the urine before handing it over. We tried faking jaundice aswell. But no, no, that didn't go well, that was harder."

  • "Do you regret now, that you used to be a Communist?" "Yes, yes I do. I regret it, because when I was a boy I imagined something much simpler. I told myself: 'How can I have such a stupid father.' And suddenly I realised, that my father was an awfuly clever man, wise, even saintly I would say. I regret that the most, that I didn't respect my father."

  • "We were brought up to great patriotism in elementary school. The Germans and us hated each other. Dobřany was a half-German nest in those days. It's laughable now, for instance one baker behaved downright nastily to Czechs. When we went by, we threw stones at them. And when we had trouble at school because of it, our teacher took a stand for us. The Germans in Dobřany really behaved like true Sudeties. Sudetan Germans. At every opportunity they had anti-Czech speaches. That German baker for instance claimed that come Spring, he would be using Czechs as manure."

  • "When you were sixteen, what did you think (about the mobilisation of 1938, the Mnichov conference)? Was it a challenge?" "No, no. It was awful!" "What did you see during the mobilisation in September 1938?" "We knew some soldiers, and when they were returning from the fortified positions, we asked them what happened and why they had to leave. We were all mortified by it." "What do you think today? Should we have fought?" "Yes! Yes we should have! Because like this it seemed to the whole world as if we had accepted the ocupants. Mussolini declared that if a nation does not fight against ocupation, then it deserves it. It's neccessary to find the courage to stand up against a much greater opponent."

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    Praha, Czech republic, Vojenská nemocnice ve Střešovicích, Dům pro veterány, 03.09.2008

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    duration: 01:26:08
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 27.07.2009

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    duration: 10:25
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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    Praha - Střešovice, 18.08.2009

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    duration: 09:00
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Dad used to say: ‘This world is the most acceptable of all worlds!’ It’s a shame that I didn’t respect him I see now, that he was a great and wise man

Ivan Malý, 2009
Ivan Malý, 2009

Ivan Malý was born on the 13th of October 1922 in Dobřany near Pilsen, into a Catholic family. He was a single child. His father, head of the Asylum for the Mentally Ill in Dobřany (later they moved to the Bohnice asylum in Prague), taught him respekt for his country and for human life. Malý remembers his childhood summers in Dobřany, where there was a sizeable German minority that the Czechs considered to be enemies. The Czch and German children warred with each other, Ivan’s gang used to break the windows of German shops. In 1940 Malý joined an anti-Nazi youth group in Bohnice. They helped people that were called to “slavework” in Germany. The anti-Nazi hid a paratrooper from SSSR, Rudolf Vetišek. Malý produced potassium cyanide for the resistance. Vetiška was discovered and with him the whole group. Ivan Malý was tortured in the infamous Petschkov palace. He was held in an interrogation cell in Pankrác for several months, until being released towards the end of 1944. After the war, Communist Ivan Malý started working as an army medic in the Military Hospital in Prague 6. He did not take much notice of the political trials of the Fifties. He considered the executions of Milada Horáková, Heliodor Píka and others to be correct, as he believed that the convicted persons were “evil imperialist spies”. He agreed with the intervention of the armies of the Warsaw Pact in August 1968. He accepted everything his superiors told him. After 1989 he left the KSČ (Czech Communist Party) and, as he claims, has come to see things clearly.