“Whoever didn’t own a gun in those years wasn’t even considered to be a true boy”.
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Jiří Materna was born on 12 April, 1932, in the village of Heřmanice near Nová Paka. His father Eduard Materna was a construction engineer and later an urban farmer. His mother Anna was taking care of her three sons. Jiří’s studies were complicated by war as he wasn’t able to continue studying during the war. When the war ended, he started a one-year apprenticeship and then studied at a business academy in Hořice. After he graduated from the academy, he started to work for the state construction works in Hradec Králové. His biggest passion was the Boy Scout movement. He was a member of the Boy Scout since the war when he and a few of his friends formed an illegal Scouting brigade. He continued in his Boy Scout activities after the war. After the takeover of power by the Communists in February 1948, the Boy Scouts in the Nová Paka region helped a local anti-Communist military group - they disseminated leaflets, set up their own radio and were involved in other activities as well. They were, however, being followed by the secret state police. Jiří Materna and his friends from the Boy Scout were arrested on 5 June, 1954. This was when he did his compulsory military service. During the detention period Jiří Materna experienced harsh treatment as he was repeatedly tied to a chair or starved for prolonged periods of time. The investigators aimed at getting the young scouts to confess that they were directed by the Boy Scout Center but failed in their effort. The whole group of Boy Scouts, consisting of 10 accused, was therefore labeled as ‘Nezdařil and Company’. The trial was held in Prague and the prosecutor demanded four death sentences. Eventually, due to their teen age bordering on juvenility, they were sentenced to long prison terms. Jiří Materna was sentenced to 15 years in jail. He was transferred from Mírov to Pankrác, where he was placed into military isolation. Gradually, he joined the clerics that served their term in prison. He was later transferred again, this time to Leopoldov, where he managed to join a hunger strike (the so-called ‘noodle strike’). He also witnessed a couple of attempted escapes, most notoriously by his inmate Áda Petrovský. In prison, he also met many outstanding personalities like, for example, Šaňo Mach or Gustáv Husák. His time in prison ended with the so-called ‘May amnesty’ in 1960. After his release from prison, it was, of course, very hard for him to find a job but due to help from his friends, he was admitted to the state-owned construction works. He studied an evening school of industry while working there. After a while, he was also called upon to complete his military service which he did in the auxiliary battalions of the Czechoslovak national army. His life was profoundly changed in 1968 when he became active again. Although he didn’t believe in the transformative process taking place in the Communist party, he nevertheless used the opportunity to renew his Boy Scout group and activities and to take part in the newly created ‘Club K 231’. At that time he had already been married for some time and gradually he became the father of two sons. The coming of the so-called ‘Normalisation’ wasn’t perceived by the former inmate too painfully and he was mostly absorbed by his family affairs. However, his new life wasn’t equal to resignation. He was friends with the brother in law of Josef Škvorecký, Salivar. He was helping Salivar by hiding his illegal manuscripts and microfilms at his place. Jiří Materna perceived the revolution of 1989 and related events with a certain skepticism due to his experiences with the year 1968. But he accepted an invitation by the Škvorecký family to visit them in Toronto for six weeks. After his return to then Czechoslovakia he contributed to the renewal of the Boy Scout organization in the country and to this day he’s going to Boy Scout summer camps. He was one of those who initiated the founding of the brigade of honor of Velen Fanderlík. He also became an active member of the local Confederation of Political Prisoners (KPV) in Nová Paka. His son managed to find a valuable archive of the Club K 231 in Nová Paka in 2008.
