Petr Michálek

* 1966

  • "During about half of the 1980s, I don't know if it was Good Friday or Ash Wednesday, in any case, there were two days of fasting. I returned from school and warmed my sausage. As I was eating it in the kitchen, dad came back from work and saw me. He sometimes made such great gestures, so as he saw me dipping the sausage into the mustard and chewing the bread, he looked at me, cracked his hands and asked me if I was eating meat. So I nodded in agreement, but I already knew something was going on, and my hand was dropping down slowly on the plate as he told me that they didn't give us food in jail on purpose, and when we fasted, they gave us meat and we all refused. Dad left. I pushed the plate away feeling terribly guilty.”

  • “The canonization of Agnes of Bohemia took place in Prague at weekend, so a lot of people from Boskovice were going to Prague. I didn't go to Prague, not even for a demonstration that was summoned to Letna. I went to Brno again, I was watching TV on Saturday morning in the morning and there was footage of Jarda Hutek, a songwriter and a folkist arriving at the airport in Ruzyne. They did not want to let him pass to the Republic to transit through the airport hall. I went to Brno, I was watching TV with my friend and there was a broadcast from Letná and Hutka was singing Náměšť, so on Saturday 25 November I thought it would all work out.”

  • “And when Petr Čepek knew in 1994 that his days were coming to an end, he spent the last weeks of his life at the cottage and expressed the wish that he would still like to meet up with Václav Havel, who was already President of the Republic at that time. Petr Čepek was one of those who created the history of the Civic Forum alongside him from the beginning since 18 November. The photos he is always near him. So Václav Havel visited Petr Čepek at the cottage and when they said goodbye, Mr. Čěpek shouted at Mr. Havel that he should not get annoyed…. It's hard many times, but one should not get annoyed by anyone.”

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    Studio PN Brno, 26.09.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 02:12:58
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
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Do not get annoyed

Petr Michálek in 1990
Petr Michálek in 1990
photo: archiv pamětníka

Petr Michálek was born on September 18, 1966 in Boskovice, grew up with his parents and sister Eva, who was just a year older. During the World War II his father, František Michálek, was involved in the resistance and in 1947 was awarded the title of Czechoslovak partisan. In 1949, he was arrested and sentenced to twenty years of high-treason and espionage in a fabricated trial with another 65 students in the group named “Vomela et al.” After elementary school, Petr Michálek joined the Secondary Agricultural Technical School in Boskovice in 1981. During his student years he visited his favorite author Jaroslav Foglar, and he was able to listen to current radio stations. After graduation he studied preliminary year at the Faculty of Arts, but was not accepted for further study. He spent the next two years with military basic service in Slovakia. In 1989 he signed the petition Several sentences and he and his friend handed over the signature sheet personally to the mail box at the Václav Havel apartment. During the Velvet Revolution, he participated in several demonstrations in Brno, co-founded the Civic Forum in Boskovice, participated in improving posters and preparing the general strike. After the revolution he began studying at the Palacký University in Olomouc in the field of history of dramatic arts and literature, where he also shot feature films with his classmates. He did not finish his studies, but together with his classmates he founded the civic association Laputa and ran an Art Cinema. Until 1998 he worked in the Museum of Boskovice. Since 1993 he has been one of the dramaturges of the Festival for the Jewish Quarter in Boskovice, organized by Unijazz Praha, z.s. In 2002 his son Ondřej was born. Later he had several jobs in various publishing houses. He currently works as a warehouse worker and driver for the Jota Brno publishing house and lives in Veverská Bítýška.