It is important not to get involved with the wrong people
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Ivan Matějka was born in Prague on 12 February 1936 but spent most of his life in Jičín. He first went to school in 1942, and sometimes came home from classes in the dark and to the sound of sirens warning of Allied aircraft overhead. As a boy, he witnessed the Gestapo searching their home. He listened to the noise and watched the flashes in the sky caused by the bombing of Dresden with his brothers in 1945. He kept secret the fact that his parents had sheltered three captured Italian officers who managed to escape as they marched through Jičín. After graduating in 1954, he studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague with Václav Havel as his classmate for two years. The two also met during their mandatory military service in Plzeň. He spent the majority of his career at ČSAD Jičín. In 1968, he attended the funeral of two fellow citizens who were shot by a drunk Polish soldier who came to Jičín as part of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. On Christmas Eve 1977, he heard the text of Charter 77 at midnight mass during parish priest František Polreich’s sermon. He was then contacted by the State Security Service at work and questioned about the sermon. In 1990, he ran for the Jičín City Council for the Civic Forum and became the first post-1989 mayor of the town. He and his wife Božena had a son and a daughter. He was a scout and an amateur actor. He lived in Jičín in 2019.