Jan Sajdl

* 1964

  • “It was said that on the next day, on Sunday, we would go to the square again at 4 PM. And they already knew about us. There was even a prosecutor with this comrade from the National Committee. I can still remember her name: Dagmar Stupková. And she was telling us: 'Go away, this is an authorized gathering.' Later, she was testifying that she was so afraid that someone would kill her, as she went there alone. As there was no riot squad to protect her. From time to time, a car would come and they would pick someone up and arrest him. First clashes with the police happened in the street we were living in, as they would block it. Like in Jankovcova steet, they would put a roadblock there. And they wouldn´t let the people to Šanov, to district with a spa resort. But we knew that near the roadblock there were these stairs to a high-rise my mother was living in, that we could bypass the roadblock by taking the Karel Čapek street. So some of us took the stairs and the rest went the other way. Right at my mom´s house... I told her: 'Be sure to look from the balcony, as there wouldn´t be just punks! Plain and ordinary people are joining us! Mothers with children are joining our peaceful march.' As I knew from the week before.”

  • “Melanie Šnajdrová. She knew more people in Prague, and she also was in touch with people living in the communes. She was working at a secondhand bookshop. And back then, they knew that she was involved, that people were coming to this secondhand bookshop in Teplice to get samizdat literature, that it served at this kind of a transfer point. So they published this article in Průboj, the Communist Party District Committee´s daily paper, with a title 'Bookshelves full of drugs´. They accused her of having drugs in the store, like meth and other things like that. And she would cut her wrists right in that bookshop. She was nowhere to be found, so I had to go to the shop, as no one had a car. It was dark inside but I saw as if there was a leg sticking out from behind something back in the storeroom. I didn´t know what to do, as there was a no way to get inside. I knew there were iron bars in the back. Standing on main street, the Lenin street, I would get a cobblestone and I would throw it through the front door to smash it. And there was this patrol car passing by. And they didn´t even stop. 'Don´t mind what´s happening at the secondhand bookshop.' As if someone knew. They didn´t stop, they just went on. So I broke through the door and found her lying on those three chairs, two buckets full of blood underneath her. I knew that if I would call an ambulance, they would take her somewhere she didn´t want to go, to Ústí nad Labem or to some restricted psychiatric ward. So I called the single reasonable man I knew – Dr Pichlík from the surgery ward, a Charter 77 signatory. 'So bring her to me,' he said, 'I will stitch her up.'”

  • “After they were done, they released everyone except for me and my friend, Robert Appel, with whom I had been sharing a school desk since my first grade and with whom I had been publishing The Bird of Teplice Magazine (Teplický Fógl). No one would talk to us, they had all left. I said: 'When will you let us go home?' They told us to shut up. So we did. After some time, two men arrived. Maybe they were waiting for someone who could transport us to Teplice. As they didn´t want to let us go in Ústí nad Labem, I would say, even I didn´t know why. But later, I understood. So the two men came and said: 'So you would take a ride in a nice car after all.” And we would get in this Škoda car which was in such a terrible condition, we didn´t go in a nice car. We were sitting in the back seat, there was no one sitting with us. One of the policemen was driving and the other one was sitting next to him. Maybe the doors were locked so we wouldn´t run away. They drove us from Ústí to Chlumec, turning to a bus terminal where they would slow down and throw my friend from the car. Then they just drove away, with me still in the car. I found it quite weird. As we were halfway to Teplice, we had still a long way before us. They headed for this forest at Telenice, took a forest road. Suddenly, we were in this forest, it was night already, maybe even midnight. Now I just didn´t know what was going on. They were silent, didn´t say a word. As we came to the end of the road I realised that the door they threw Robert out of weren´t locked. So I opened the door and ran for my life without hesitating. I heard them laughing and lighting a cigarette: 'Seems he thought we would shoot him.' Such a laugh they were having. And they would drive away. It was so cold, so I went downhill, as I saw some signs of life there. And there was this sign 'Telnice' – a train stop. So I said to this women behind the counter: 'Hello, could you please corroborate that I had been brought here by the police...?' - 'I won´t corroborate a thing. The first train goes at five in the morning, you can sit right over there.'”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 28.01.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:56:23
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 04.02.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:41:43
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 3

    Praha, 23.04.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 44:57
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

People with a Mohawk were always first to go

Malý Jan Sajdl
Malý Jan Sajdl
photo: Příběhy našich sousedů

Jan Sajdl, an enterpreneur and an amateur musician, was born on August 28th 1964 in Teplice. His parents, Vladimír Sajdl and Jarmila née Práglová, were among the original, pre-war inhabitants of the city. In 1938, during the takeover of the Sudetenland, his mother had been abused by her German peers. Jan Sajdl´s life had been strongly affected by an accident in 1973 as both of his jaws were smashed by a loosened sideboard of a passing truck. He had to undergo series of complicated dental reconstruction surgeries till his seventeenth year of age. He started his first band as a twelve-years-old, but soon gave up an idea of a professional music career. He completed a secondary technical school in Děčín, becoming a father during his studies. After doing his compulsory military service, he got fully involved in the counter-culture scene in the city of Teplice: he had been playing with The Sad Scuba-divers (Smutní potápěči) and several other bands, copying samizdat publications and distributing Vokno and Revolver Revue underground magazines; he also had been publishing The Bird of Teplice (Teplický Fógl) magazine with his friend Robert Appel. He had been harassed by the police and interrogated by the Secret Police (StB). He had been working at Teplice´s (Obvodní podnik bytového hospodářství), after that, he took a blue-collar job at Color Servis Teplice Enterprise. From November 11th to November 13th 1989, he had been participating in environmental protests and also co-founding the local Civic Forum (Občanské fórum) organisation in Teplice. In 1990, he had been working at the North-Bohemian Revue (Severočeská revue) editorial office. Thereafter, he was a French modeling agency representative and had also been organising military equipment exhibitions for NATO countries. Currently, he has been living in Prague (Praha), meeting his friends from Teplice community at The Shot-Out Eye Pub (U Vystřelenýho oka) in the district of Žižkov.