Václav Obadálek

* 1961

  • “My dad and his fellow prisoners tried to understand why the communists locked them up. So, in the nick they studied Marxism-Leninism. There were plenty of educated people there – priests, lawyers, medical doctors – and they commonly held lectures and seminars. I still have a four-page letter from 1956 in which my father describes to his eldest brother the economic and philosophical basis of communist materialism and explains why it couldn’t work and didn’t work. In prison he became better informed about what was going on in the communist block than those people who had their ‘common concerns’: to go to work and bring children to school.”

  • “I remember that during my university studies I once walked out of the Týn church and some middle-aged guys begun to take pictures of me. I walked away through Kozí street and they followed me. So I began to zigzag through Bílkova street, but they were still behind my back. I don’t know whether they followed me on purpose or whether they waited for young people to get out of the church after the mass.”

  • “During the whole time of his imprisonment my mother supported my father and came to visit him. Everywhere she would introduce herself as his fiancé. In Horní Moštěnice the family would even refer to her as Václav’s wife. At that time it probably became clear to her that she cannot just tell Vašek: ‘I’m not enjoying this anymore, you’ve been locked up for eight years now, I also want to have a life.’ In 1948 when she and my dad met she had a suiter from Domažlice who waited for several years. But eventually he came to see her, met her in front of her parents’ shop and told her: ‘Jana, I would like to marry you, let’s go to your parents’ and I will make a proposal.’ But she told him that this was not possible and broke up with him.”

  • “The Members of Parliament who investigated crimes against the German population knew at that time already that they were about to become unwanted, that such things will be swept under the carpet. They were thinking about how to protect their and their families’ lives. Even doctor Bunža was invited to emigrate several times. He sorted it out by not coming home at all, sleeping over at various places and going to the Parliament via various routes. My dad served as liaison between him and his family: when he or his wife called, he sorted out whatever they needed.”

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    Praha, 19.03.2015

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My dad studied Marxism-Leninism to understand why they had imprisoned him

Student Václav Obadálek
Student Václav Obadálek

Václav Obradálek, Jr. was born on 20 July 1961 in Prague. He is the son of Václav Obradálek senior. He graduated from a school of nuclear technology, and from Economics and Management at Czech Technical University in Prague. During his military service he had worked as a programmer and to this day is active in the field of information technologies. Václav Obradálek senior joined the Czechoslovak People’s Party after World War II and participated in the related political developments. In 1947-1948 he was a secretary of Czechoslovak People’s Party and in this position followed the activities of investigating commissions attempting to shed light on crimes against humanity committed by the end of the war and shortly after it. In 1948 he was arrested and sentenced in the process against Miroslav Choc. In 1948-1960 he was imprisoned for political reasons. In 1956 he by proxy married Janu Dobíhalová, a friend from a theater ensemble who had been visiting him in prison for years. They had only had the proper religious ceremony following his release in 1960.