Mgr. Jaromír Vitvar

* 1931

  • “Back then I and my sister arrived home from school and there was nobody at home. There were scattered things and dishes on the floor in the kitchen. We wondered what had happened there. Our mom would never clean like that, she would never put dishes on the floor. The drawers in the room were pulled out and things were scattered on the floor. We were stunned because of that. The window was open and our cousin who also lived in Lomnice came after a while and called out to us to go and have lunch at their place. It was at their home that we found out that Gestapo had arrested our dad. A police officer took him to Kartouzy near Jičín. There was a medieval prison, it was called Kartouzy.”

  • “Hitlerjugend were there from about 1941. They were accommodated at school. There were a lot of them there. They walked around the town and had strict discipline. We as boys did the worst to them but when I now remember it, I think poor them. They were walking around in the freezing cold wearing short trousers and knee-high socks, their legs were purple. They were skiing and we did the worst to them. In Lomnice nad Popelkou, in Podkrkonoší Region, ski competitions in ski jumping were organized because the German borders were further away.”

  • “'Comrade, we would need you to be a principal in Dolní Břežany,' they told me. A school was being finalised in Dolní Břežany back then. I told them: 'Why not, but I am not a Party member.' They were surprised I was not a Party member but said that it was not a problem and that they would take care of it. It was in 1982. (They said) they would arrange it and they were counting on me. They came in about two days. Only one of them, the head of the department, came and not both of them and he said, 'Do not be angry with us, but unfortunately it did not pass.' They thought it would be approved, but it could not."

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    Zvole u Prahy, 12.04.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 03:06:50
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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You are not in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, you cannot be principal, comrade

Photo of Jaromír Vitvar
Photo of Jaromír Vitvar
photo: the witness

Jaromír Vitvar was born on 10 December 1931 in Jičín to a family of a teacher Anna Vitvarová and a clerk Jaromír Vitvar who was an accountant at Weaving Loom Factory in Lomnice nad Popelkou. The witness had a sister who was two years older than him. He was born with hand paralysis and his hand remained almost immobile even though thanks to his father´s care, he successfully managed to overcome his disability. He spent most of his childhood in Lomnice nad Popelkou where he started attending the first grade of school in 1937. He remembers the atmosphere of the Protectorate in Lomnice nad Popelkou, for example, mobilization and Hitlerjugend. His father Jaromír Vitvar Senior was a trainer in Sokol; he did amateur theatre and sang in a choir. He was arrested by Gestapo in 1941 because he cooperated with the resistance organization Obrana národa (Defence of the Nation). Ten-year-old Jaromír knew about the resistance activities of his father and helped him. Jaromír Vitvar senior died in 1944 in Polish prison in Gollnow (now Goleniów). The family found themselves in an existential crisis because the mother was fired from work. They were supported by their relatives and people from resistance, the mother and children made some extra money by sewing things with beads. After the war, they moved to Prague where Jaromír Vitvar graduated from Grammar school in 1950. He refused to join the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union (SSM) and later the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) which prevented him from university studies and put him at a disadvantage in other ways. After graduation, at his request, he was placed as a teacher in village schools in the Ostrava region, where he taught for several years, then worked in Zvole near Prague. He started a family, he and his wife raised two daughters. He lived in Týnec nad Sázavou in the 1960s and 1970s. Jaromír Vitvar taught Maths and Physics, he studied and graduated in pedagogy as an extra-mural student during normalization. He refused to sign Anticharter. He could not work as a principal which was offered to him in 1982 because he did not want to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He worked as a school inspector from 1990 to 1993. He lived in Zvole near Prague in 2023.