“These days we are honoring the 50th anniversary of Jan Palach’s heroic deed. When I see the large crowds, the thousands of candles on television I don’t say to myself: ‘Where were you people?’ Instead I ask myself ‘Where were we when Palach set himself on fire?’ Most of us kept quiet. I know there was a funeral procession, because the authorities could not prevent that. Now everyone has an opinion. The whole city of Prague is in an uproar because of Palach. Back in the day the events were relatively calm. There were no torches or (general) strikes. Me and my lack of heroism partook in that.”
“When our leaders were taken to Moscow their return was just terrible. I also gave in to mob mentality and felt sorry for them even though they betrayed us. They were all cowards, with the exception of František Kriegel, who has been largely forgotten. Ask people in the street who Kriegel was. Some might remember. Normalizace (rollback of reforms after 1968) was dished out slice by slice like salami.
“My wife had a job and she also took care of me. I focused on my job performance. Unfortunately, our family is obsessed with work. My mom had a fast food eatery for students. There were many other eateries and mom had to be the best, always. She was obsessed. What else can I add? I can show you documents from my 20 years of work at a bank as a branch manager. It was very difficult for me to bear when our branch was not assessed to be the best in the country during annual evaluations. This is not the right way to go, I cannot recommend this approach to anybody.”
“In Zálešná where we lived there was still combat. We snuck out to the town square where the victory celebrations were already under way. There was music and Czechoslovak flags. Later, we would take cover with our parents in the cellar and told them that Russian soldiers liberated the town square. Later, it was said that Romanian units were the main liberators. Romanians have graves here, but we saw only Russians. When the Russians took over the whole town, we invited soldiers to our home and they were Russian. They were not Romanian even though Romanian units liberated some parts of the city. Even after the whole town of Zlín was freed, there was artillery bombardment of the surrounding hills. We tried to help out by carrying howitzer ammunition. That’s what the war was like.”
Zdeněk Rybka was born on June 7, 1927 in Mukachevo, Subcarpathian Ruthenia. His father was in the Czechoslovak Legion and a member of Sokol. He worked as a public administrator throughout his life. Rybka’s mother worked for the Bata company in retail stores and later managed a fast food eatery in the town of Zlín. Rybka attended primary school and a gymnasium after his father’s job transfer to Bojnice, Slovakia. With the rise of nationalism, the Rybka family fled back to Moravia just before the establishment of fascism in Slovakia. In Zlín, Rybka attended a Bata vocational school and graduated with a Matura as a shoemaker and one of Bata’s Young Men. In 1946 he partook in the event Youth Assisting the Borderlands (agricultural labor by students on German farms before their owners were forcibly removed from Czechoslovakia). Rybka briefly studied history in Brno at the Masaryk University - Faculty of Arts. After his military service (1948-1950) in Holešov and Libavá, he worked at banking institutions including the Zlín (formerly known as Gottwaldov) branch of the State Bank of Czechoslovakia (SBČS) where he was the director for seventeen years. In 1967 Rybka earned a postgraduate degree from University of Economics in Bratislava. He was a committee member of the Alumni Club of the Bata School of Work. Zdeněk Rybka lived in Zlín. He died in October 2022.
