"It's difficult to grasp as military forces from Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Hungary - they all took part in the occupation except for Romania - so it is inconceivable that our intelligence services did not notice it. It means the Ministry of the Interior must have known about it yet no measures were taken to counter it. We as the Union of Military University Students made clear that we insisted the army be deployed against them, even though all our plans were directed against troops from the West. No one here was prepared for that. The casualties would have been huge, a huge massacre, but we could say today that the army did what it should have done. Unfortunately, the orders of the Minister of Defence were clear: do not resist. Followig orders is what makes an army an army. If it doesn't follow orders, then it's not an army anymore. We were sorry about that, that's why we went on strike against it. A coordination staff was set up in Vyškov with Colonel Kasal and the acting commander Colonel Neugebauer and the mobilization department simply prepared or planned the mobilization of a tank division should the situation be favourable. Its equipment was stored in the Úpaly area for a long time, and the tank division, which was about three hundred tanks, would be deployed in Drahanská vrchovina against the troops advancing from the Přerov and Prostějov direction... It all came to an end soon because the Moscow Agreements fell and that was the end of it. Naturally, all those involved failed in the subsequent regime loyalty checks, dropped out. I was the first to go."
"When we finished our shift in Šmeralky at six o'clock, we went for a beer in the cafeteria, and my train left at seven o'clock. I went to the station and sometimes by chance, because there were no cell phones, Jaroslav [Šabata] was going to Dolenice. We met by chance. On the train, he would say, 'That guy over there is a secret cop, he's following me.' We arrived in Dolenice. There were two policemen on the bridge; there was the police station in Miroslav then but it's long since closed, and two policemen on the bridge were watching the station. We stepped out and walked past the former forge. The head of the auxiliary guard came running towards us with one guy, even with a gun in his hand. I said: 'What are you doing, idiots?' Unbelievable... And so... the people around - would speak to Šabata, but only cautiously. And Petr Uhl, he didn't get cancer out of nothing. He would type all the time with a lit candle. I said, 'Why the candle?' and he said, 'To avoid wasting time lighting cigarettes. I light them with the candle...' I said, 'Are you going for a walk?' He said, 'No. I'm going to the post office to make a call as the phones here bugged.' There was a phone in the pub... but he said it was most likely bugged, so he walked to Jiřice to the post office."
"The zone is called Polesí-Březina, Dědice military training area. It's near Vyškov and the hill is called, as you said, Kozina. Colonel Neugebauer called me - I'm not sure if it was 25 August or when - and he said, 'The district committee of the CPC called and said a TV crew is coming to us and they need to broadcast from the zone. Who are we going to send there?' We discussed this and I took it up simply because I had been there the longest, as a student and, more importantly, the commander's student for some time, and I knew the training area. They came and I took them to the foot of the hill via the usual route. The Véspěrk gamekeeper's lodge, the Ferdinandsko Chateau, and the live shooting range control tower was nearby. A unit was stationed at the Ferdinandsko that took care of the training facilities in the training area, including the firing range. We selected the floor of the control tower, and I asked the unit commander who - if I'm not mistaken - was Lieutenant Colonel Fulier, also from General Svoboda's World War II corps - to give us soldiers and access to the control tower. They agreed and I took the Czechoslovak TV staff to the control tower. They checked everything out, as they needed line of sight to the Kojál transmitter and especially, if I remember it well, the structure at the base of the Kojál. It was clearly visible at the time, so they installed the equipment with the help of the soldiers, parked the transmission truck close to the tower, and the soldiers helped to camouflage it and the unit gave the TV staff full support. They were able to start broadcasting, with the proviso, of course, that everything had to be camouflaged, preferably without unnecessary movement, because soon a helicopter came constantly searching for the studio. Because, ironically, the Kojál transmitter was occupied by the Soviet army yet was still broadcasting against them, which was a huge paradox, and the Russian commanders were allegedly really furious and ready to eliminate the studio and take it over. I remember the names of Popelka, Ondráček, Zouhar. I met Mr. Zouhar afterwards. The others - Mr. Popelka went to Austria, and via Mr Cílka at ORF TV - I think his name was Cílka - then they went to see the mayor of Vienna. That's how the news from the Brno studio reached not only the country but the whole world."
Libor Plíšek was born in the South Moravian village of Rozkoš on 16 March 1945 to parents Julie and Jan. He wanted to be a soldier from a young age; they called him a ‘general’, and so after graduating from the Jan Žižka Military High School in Bratislava, he entered the Otakar Jaroš Higher Military School in Vyškov. He took part in Project Vltava, one of the largest military exercises in Czechoslovakia in 1966. He chaired the faculty parliament of the Association of Military University Students in Vyškov. He was also in the military when the Warsaw Pact troops invaded in 1968. At the time, he helped operate secret Czechoslovak Television (ČST) broadcasts from the Březina military zone. He was expelled from the army and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1970 because of this. He was only able to find jobs in tough blue-collar positions. During the normalisation period, he became friends with Jaroslav Šabata, a Charter 77 signatory and spokesman, and with his son-in-law and signatory Petr Uhl. Likely because of this, he came into the crosshairs of the State Security. When the regime collapsed, Libor Plíšek was rehabilitated and returned to the army as a public relations officer and later as deputy chief of the District Military Administration in Znojmo. He retired from the army in 2000. He was elected to the Znojmo Municipal Assembly in 1998. He and his wife raised three children. He lived in Dolenice in 2024.
Remembrance event in Rešice on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Left to right: Senator Špaček, Petr Pithart, Ivan Langer, and Libor Plíšek at the lectern
Remembrance event in Rešice on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Left to right: Senator Špaček, Petr Pithart, Ivan Langer, and Libor Plíšek at the lectern
A remembrance event at the memorial to five RAF airmen in Němčičky on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Left to right: Jiří Stanislav, Bedřich Hammer
A remembrance event at the memorial to five RAF airmen in Němčičky on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Left to right: Jiří Stanislav, Bedřich Hammer
