Oldřich Novotný

* 1938

  • "I went to the city [centre] then, the trams didn´t run, so I walked from Strašnice to Wenceslas Square. I also remember that in Vinohradská Street, in front of the [Czechoslovak] Radio residence, such simple barricades were made from trams and some buses, and in front of the barricade there were some Russian tanks. They fired in the air, the Russians fired in the air. So it was a bit wild there. And then I was on Wenceslas Square, where some tanks were driving and burning papers were thrown on a tank. And then I was going back and I know there was a shooting, so I had to lie down somewhere in Rieger's Park on the ground, because I had a feeling that bullets were flying around. And I walked back to Strašnice, because the trams didn´t run, the transport didn´t work. "

  • "It was difficult for me that, for example, at school it was being written down what your dad does. Each of my classmates got up and said what his dad was, I don't know, a worker, a clerk or something. There were twenty-five or thirty of us in the class I went to, I don't remember. So because I was a bit ashamed to say it in front of the whole class, I got up and walked to the teacher´s desk and said to the teacher: 'My dad's in a penal institution.'"

  • "Well, we had been on holidays, and since the holidays were over, we were returning - now I don't know exactly if it was on the thirtieth or thirty-first, probably the thirtieth - my grandma brought us, me and my brother, to Hradec. And right than, in the afternoon my father was brought in there, a plain-clothes policeman came with him and asked ... Simply the workers in the workshop, which was normally running on, they had to leave, and my father had to make the stamps that afternoon in order to get a piece of evidence. This means that the stamps were actually made on request, before, they only had prints. They apparently needed documents [evidence] for the court, simply those particular completed stamps. Well, of course we talked to him there, and the work took about three hours and then they drove him away again."

  • Full recordings
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    Poděbrady, 05.10.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:22:31
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Poděbrady, 02.11.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 17:11
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Don’t tell me what you did yesterday, show me what you can do today, and don’t forget to convince me tomorrow again

Oldřich Novotný, first half of the 1960s
Oldřich Novotný, first half of the 1960s
photo: Witness´s archive

Oldřich Novotný was born on June 4, 1938 in Hradec Králové. During the war, he spent his childhood partly in Bítouchov near Bakov nad Jizerou. His father Oldřich Novotný senior was a self-employed workman, he owned an engraving workshop. He was arrested in August 1949 after making fake stamps for supposed emigrants. In the show trial of Maděra and associates in the summer of 1950, he was sentenced for complicity in the crime of high treason to 18 years in prison. Oldřich’s mother and two sons were deprived of all their property and housing. During his father’s imprisonment, the witness rarely saw him. In addition to family housing and finance difficulties, he also had problems with admission to studies, he had to go to a vocational school first. Only later could he graduate from a secondary technical school in Jablonec nad Nisou. His father returned from prison after being released under the amnesty in 1960, just as Oldřich was taking his secondary school-leaving exams. After completing compulsory military service, he began studying at the Faculty of Education in Olomouc, from which he graduated in 1967. In August 1968, he witnessed the events of the Soviet occupation in Prague. In November 1989, he took part in demonstrations. He worked as a teacher at a vocational school in Prague.