“In this atmosphere, my opinions were being formed. When I was about nine years old there was some celebration taking place at Smíchov, near the Soviet tank, probably on the occasion of the Great October Socialist Revolution. I was there with a classmate; we stood there with a bunch of people and waited for something to happen. Suddenly, a yellow-white police car arrived, with a blue and red roof light – having complete right of way – a black GAZ car, and a Tatra 613. Comrade president and secretary general Husák got out of the GAZ, walking to his spot which somebody assigned to him, and which was just next to where we were. I stood there looking around – I knew him from the TV, his picture was in our school, this was Gustáv Husák. Suddenly he began to stroke my hair. I came home with my eyes wide open, not knowing much about it in my nine years of age. My parents were rather disconcerted: ‘Yeah, yeah.’ - ‘Mr. Husák, the president, her caressed me.’ – ‘Well, so he did.’ They did not comment on it much and I of course only understood a couple years later. Not that they would scold me for it but there was some unease about it.”
“To this day I am asking myself this question. It was the moment when the administration contemplated what to do with us: whether to let us go, or write to our school. I ended up with criminal prosecution which was the case of only several tenths out of the hundreds who were detained. Was it because that captain recognized me and told it to the policeman who arrested me? Was it because my parents did not have a favorable Party profile? Because my father was active in 1968? Was it because I was so terribly young? All of these reasons were probably relevant – the younger, the more they should be punished. So they brought us to the building across the road, where we had to stand again. While the policemen in here were from the emergency regiment, those policemen in there were even more brutal – mentally and verbally brutal. ‘Look at him, those saviors of the nation…’ Nation was their favorite word. We received a lot of such ridiculing, it was stupid and evil. Obviously, we were afraid. They took our pictures in there and lead us out into a prison van, a blue Avia, where normal policemen were guarding us. Their eyes were different, so were their facial expressions. I am not saying that normal, they served the communist regime, but they themselves were normal.”
“So we went on strike and this was the most peculiar and greatest time of my life. Never again did I feel that I did something as important. Only after my son was born, time to time when I provide him with some information, I feel that I am doing something more important. Until then I didn’t feel that way. From the perspective of a long-term and public activity I may still be working in the TV for years to come but never again will I be doing something quite as important for the country, for the society, for the feeling that I do something important, having the feeling that with a small fragment I had contributed to a great thing.
“A bus appeared. We were wondering where was it about to go because we didn’t know. The other people waved at us because they got the point and saw policemen sitting in the front, and a police number. When we turned towards Národní třída and then left, I realized that this was the better option, that they wouldn’t drive us somewhere behind Prague. Bartolomějská street, then to the right, some of those buildings, third floor. Two hours of standing at attention with our hands on the wall. We had to keep them like this, precisely at the edge of the enamel. Whenever someone turned back, they would hit him with a baton. This was no heroism, it was mere experience. Then they undressed us and checked to make sure we hadn’t anything illegal on us. Then the investigator asked me: ‘What are you up to, boy? Studying? I see grammar school here.’ – ‘Yes, Na Zatlance, Prague 5 district.’ – ‘Well, you are done with your studies now.’ If I was done with my studies, I could at least get dressed again.”
Jakub Železný was born on 1 July 1973 in Prague. His father Vladimír worked as a journalist. After the 1968 Soviet invasion he had to leave his job at the Czechoslovak TV and instead make a living as an editor of the Technical Magazine. His mother Marta was in 1970 dismissed from the Institute of Sociology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, later finding a job in the National Library. Jakub Železný finished elementary school in 1987 and continued studying at a grammar school Na Zatlance. On 28 October 1988 he was present at a demonstration celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, held at Prague’s Wenceslas Square. On 19 January 1989 he was arrested for his attendance of demonstrations held within the so-called Palach week. Following interrogations and investigation he was criminally charged. However, the prosecutor then proposed punishment in the form of a rebuke, allowing him to continue with his studies. He participated in the students’ march of 17 November 1989, after which he presided the strike committee of his grammar school. He then graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague and Faculty of Philosophy, Palacký University, Olomouc. At present he works as a radio and television presenter.
