Ing. Jan Pořízek

* 1958

  • “Sometime during my eighth year of school in 1972 we went to a PE lesson and everyone used to wear the same type of white trainers and the children took mine and wrote on them before the PE lesson: ‘Praise the Lord, Ave Maria, amen‘ and they drew crosses on the trainers. I wore them during the PE lesson and felt very offended. I remember that the teacher did not stand up for me at all, I don´t know if I can say his name, he later became a headmaster and ever a regional inspector, but he did not stand up for me at all. He was laughing at it: ‘Well, what?‘ I was feeling horrible about the fact they wrote it there and ridiculed me. Even though I was the class president. I took them to the parish priest because I was an altar boy and he said: ‘Jan, give me the trainers, I will hide them here, put them in the sacristy and they will stay there because they are a big testimony.”

  • “I got to the revival meeting which took place in Brno in hall A somewhere around December in 1989. When I saw the seniors and how excited they were I thought that it was amazing and that I would go for it no matter what. Eventually, everyone stood up, raised their hand, and the Scout anthem was sung and I found out that I did not know a word of the Scout anthem. I was really ashamed, I was mouthing it so that nobody could recognize it and I said to myself that I had to catch up with that.”

  • “They wanted to break me, well not break me but they wanted me to finally get scared. They were pretending that it was a real prison because I got two blankets there, those itchy ones. I was there during the day, I could not sit or lie down, it was not possible because there was nothing to lie on, I could only walk back and forth. They looked at me every hour, there was half-light inside, and at night we had to take the belt off our trousers so we wouldn't hang ourselves, take our shoes off and they lit a 200-Watt bulb (above us).”

  • “I played the organ in Sloup since 1975, I played it during all the weddings, all the funerals, all the masses. It happened when I was studying at university, State Security naturally approached me. They came to our house in Vavřinec, introduced themselves, and were making small talk about the weather with my parents. I arrived home and they were waiting for me, my mum was so frightened that I had never seen her like that in my life, it scared the living daylights out of her. The state security officer came and said: Listen, comrade, you play the organ, you are there all the time and we would need information about how many people go there, where the buses come from and how many altar boys are there. I can still remember that suddenly I was not afraid at all, I was not scared at all. ‘Don´t be mad but I have no reason to do it, find someone else. You won´t hear that from me.‘”

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    Blansko, 02.11.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:01:18
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
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Commit your life to the Lord and rely on him

Jan Pořízek, graduation board of Folk Art School Blansko in 1974, subject piano
Jan Pořízek, graduation board of Folk Art School Blansko in 1974, subject piano
photo: witness´s archive

Jan Pořízek, Scout name Bobr, was born on 25 January 1958 as a first-born son of Ludmila and Jan Pořízek in the village of Vavřinec in the area of the Moravian Karst. His grandparents owned a butcher´s before 1948. The whole family was religious, so he was not admitted to a grammar school or a university and could not study Humanities. His mum was forbidden to work as a teacher at elementary school and they even wanted to force her to a psychiatric hospital. He experienced 1968 very intensely as a ten-year-old boy and he was an object of ridicule at school for his religious beliefs during normalisation. He eventually managed to graduate from the Secondary School of Civil Engineering in Jedovnice and after graduation in 1977 he unsuccessfully applied to study in Leipzig. He shortly worked in the Metra Blansko company and then he had a much better reference and was admitted to study in Brno at the Faculty of Construction, majoring in Steel Structures, where he focused on wooden constructions in his fourth year. He worked as an organ player in the Pilgrim Church in Sloup and that is why a State Security officer came to see him and wanted him to report what was happening in the church and who went there. He resolutely refused to cooperate. He was imprisoned during his military service because of listening to foreign stations and possessing banned religious literature and he spent three days of imprisonment isolated and afraid. Despite his university degree, he then had to settle for a job as a locksmith in the lowest pay grade. He later worked in Wood processing plants, he designed for example a burnt-out sawmill in Rájec-Jestřebí. In 1985, he got married to Jaroslava Blahová who he met during the organization of Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH) camps where they both worked as camp leaders. They raised three children together - Anna (born 1986), Vít (born 1989), and Jana (born 1995). He spent the 1989 Revolution in Blansko. He put up posters and on 26 November he attended the mass for the canonization of Saint Agnes of Bohemia in the Saint Vitus Cathedral and the huge demonstration in Letná. He worked as the head of the construction office in Blansko and later as a teacher at secondary schools. He very actively participated in the revival of the scouting movement, he founded a troop and then the Lights Scout Christian centre, which he and his wife are still involved in today (2021).