Jindřich Tolar

* 1965

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  • "When I didn't have a lot of money, I put it in my pocket somewhere and went like that. Then I got to a point where there was quite a lot of money, I remember it was definitely more than the 1,000 marks my friends gave me - one gave me a hundred, one two hundred, I had some of mine, so I was a bit worried. Normally, we would get like 60 marks as a government allowance. My friend Robert Kabeš's father was a well-known smith in Karlovy Vary; he made stained glass, and Robert said: 'You know what? Buy canned fish, the can you open with this little key, and bring it to me. So I did, and he said, 'Come back in two or three days.' I came, he put up the cans and said: 'Can you tell which one holds the money?' I couldn't tell, of course. 'There's fish skeletons in there too, so you don't have to worry when they X-ray it.' Of course nobody X-rayed anything, and I brought the cans to my dad and said, 'Look, let's open it up.' He wondered how it worked."

  • "It should also be said that Luboš Rychvalský and I also organised happenings or performances here in Vary. For example, we walked the town on St.Stephen's Day with a flute, we rang doorbels and sang carols. We went to the houses where the police and military officers lived, near the marketplace and in Horova Street. They would actually lock the house and call the police, saying that it was some kind of provocation, and then we would escape via secret exits. There was some sort of fallout shelter in that building and I knew it from my childhood; we climbed from there up into some courtyards and escaped. So when the police arrived in that locked house, we were gone. Then we used to paint on the fences - Karlovy Vary had fences everywhere in those days, all over the place. We painted deer, roe deer and trees on the fences... We would hand out paintbrushes and paints to people and nobody really knew what it actually meant. That was interesting stuff."

  • "I thought, what am I supposed to do now? The pages are in progress, and there's the cops... I called them and they said, 'This is Captain Slavík.' I knew by then. He said, 'Hey, come down, don't say anything to anybody at work and come down.' I misunderstood him on the phone, hearing 'come home.' I said, 'Boss, I gotta go home.' He said no way. I have to say my boss was such a good man, though an ardent communist and a judge of the people, he had all the law books. I said, 'But boss, that's the State Security...' - 'Oh, go on, then.' I went home and waited. Nothing happened for an hour. I thought, that's weird. I still officially lived with my parents, so I went there, and again nothing. I called my workplace and said, 'Look, guys...' And they're like, 'Oh, man, there were like four of them, they went through the whole office, searched everything, they were so pissed off.' I came to work and was... relieved. I felt relieved. I got on the phone and I'm like, 'I was waiting for you at home and you never came.' He's like, 'Oh, so you've already hidden it all, haven't you.' They came for me again, but I don't even remember... They were basically alluding to these things like they knew, but no specific things came up. Most importantly, nobody thought about the dark chamber; nobody ever went to check it out, so I went there in the evening or when and hid it all quickly, so that nobody would find out what I was doing there. Those were interesting experiences that shaped us."

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    Nové Sedlo, 07.03.2025

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I still see that “tough” StB officer in Vary to this day

Jindřich Tolar, 1984, Tachov region
Jindřich Tolar, 1984, Tachov region
photo: Jindřich Tolar - Tolar Jindrich_2025-03-07_FA_1_0.jpg

Jindřich Tolar was born in Karlovy Vary on 15 May 1965 into the family of two local athletes, Jindřich Tolar and Drahomíra Mrtvá, née Gertraud Weintrop. His father left the country in 1969 and he was left alone with his mother. In 1971, he entered the Libušina primary school in Karlovy Vary and then went on to the high school of electrical engineering in Ostrov where he first encountered the underground scene. In 1981-1983, he visited his father in Germany and spent parts of his holidays with him. In 1983 he met Milan Kozelka, a Karlovy Vary artist, performer and art connoisseur. One year later, he graduated high school and left for Prague, from where he returned to Karlovy Vary in 1985 and joined the local theatre as a set and prop builder. He had to find a new job after the end of the theatre season so he joined Rozvodné závody as a process engineer. Throughout the 1980s, he took an active part in the happenings of the Karlovy Vary underground scene and played in the bands Žába s peněženkou na zádech and Gigantická pauza. From 1987 on, he serviced spa houses. The StB listed Jindřich Tolar on file as a ‘under investigation’ but his complete documents have not survived. He played his first show with his current band, Fish Flesh Field and Henry Dollar in 1993. The CD Zběhlý satyr (Runaway Satyr) with poems by Milan Kozelka was released. The witness received a certificate as a participant in the resistance against communism in November 2024. He lived in Karlovy Vary at the time of filming (2025).