Pavel Šindelář

* 1946

  • "There were big changes in Czechoslovakia in 1989, as it is called the Velvet Revolution, and everything has changed. So I went to Czechoslovakia in 1990, sometime in September. Because I could travel there freely, as an Australian citizen, I had an Australian passport and went to Czechoslovakia because I was not there. I met my parents, my mother, my father, my father, Bohumil, my mother, Helena, and my brother, Jirka. And we haven't seen each other in 20 years, so you can imagine how emotional the meeting was. We all got a little old, we changed, but it was beautiful."

  • "Then, when the Russians came and what was happening, I said to myself, 'It won't be good here, I'm leaving.' So I decided to go in June 1969 and took the train to Austria. So it was a big milestone in my life that got me to emigrate and stay in Australia. I did not go to Australia yet, I went to Vienna, where I went immediately to the Australian embassy, because the Australian government was taking a lot of emigrants from Czechoslovakia at that time, because we were partly considered political refugees. I crossed the border legally on my passport and exit clause, which had to be at the time. And I only went for four days, so I couldn't take a lot of things with me, nothing, just for four days, what do you need, right? So I took the most necessary things and took a few of my favorite books."

  • "There was a bit of a tension to take pictures of Russian soldiers. A rather unpleasant thing happened to me, as a Soviet soldier standing in the tank was photographed there, waving at me because he heard the camera click. Because when you take a picture, it clicks. It clicked then, not now digital. So when he heard that, he turned around and said, 'Give me the camera, give me the camera, I want the camera.' And I refused to do that and turned around leaving slowly. I can tell you I felt every inch of my back if I get the bullet or not. Fortunately, I didn't get shot, I mingled with the people. Well, just to calm down, after I started to shake, I went to the first restaurant or pub and had a few beers to recover and shake it off.”

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    Melbourne, 23.10.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:17:40
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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I decided to go away

Pavel Šindelář around 1970
Pavel Šindelář around 1970
photo: Archiv pamětníka

Pavel Šindelář was born to Helena and Bohumil Šindelář on April 21, 1946 in Prague, where he spent his entire childhood and adolescence. He graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Secondary School in Smíchov, Prague. Since the age of fifteen, he competed in cycling. At the end of 1967, he was shortlisted for the Olympics in Mexico. However, an injury prevented him from participating in the Olympics. During the Warsaw Pact invasion, Pavel took a set of pictures in the center of Prague. After August 1968, he decided to emigrate to Australia. In April 1969 he traveled to Vienna, from where he flew to Sydney after only two months. After acclimatization, he changed several jobs. He later began taking photographs and found employment in a photography studio. He returned to Prague for the first time after the Velvet Revolution in 1990. To this day (2021) he has lived in Melbourne, Australia.