Rather walk with your head against the wall than bend all the way down
Download image
Karel Pořízka was born on 5 May 1958, ten years before the Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. His grandfather František Janeček served as the chairman of the local national committee in Bousín after the war, but once the communist government took over in 1948, he was removed from his post overnight. Still, he managed to save the municipal archive, which is the only surviving archive from the villages in the area today. Karel Pořízka took care of it after his grandfather. From his early youth, he was strongly opposed to the communist regime and took part in anti-regime activities soon - he regularly went to protests and distributed the samizdat newspaper Lidové noviny. Disguised as a patient, he succeeded to enter the psychiatric hospital in Kroměříž to visit Augustin Navrátil who was circulating a petition for the rights of believers and religious freedoms. He also took part in Palach Week, during which he believes the most brutal crackdown on protesters took place. He did not sign Charter 77 because to protect his three children. At the time of filming for Memory of Nation in 2025, he lived in Bousín and ran the local pub.