"So since I was there, from 1985 to the ninety-fifth year, there hasn't been any event comparable to what happened with Minařík in the seventies. Minařík left after that, I think in the seventy-fourth year. There were then such, I experienced this myself, that I was waiting, for example, at a tram stop in the evening after work, when a stranger approached me, spoke to me in Czech and offered to meet me, to talk about Free Europe. I, of course, refused, and the very next day I informed the relevant authorities. Then it turned out, after the coup, after 1989, that there were more people working with the communist institutions in Czechoslovakia than we thought. Of course, this cooperation was of marginal value, because they were providing the communists in Czechoslovakia with information that was absolutely meaningless. What they learned, for example, in the canteen, and various categories of gossip and so on. Maybe it was deliberate, because some of them were suspected of having embarked on this dubious career under certain pressures, perhaps they had family in the Czech Republic and so on."
"That was one of the reasons I decided to leave - because I participated in the demonstration - I can't remember the name of the street in the center of Prague where the barricades were being built - on the part of those demonstrators. I was walking past, in one hand I had a briefcase and in the other I was carrying a huge bucket which I was supposed to contribute to the building of this barricade. There was a photojournalist from Die Welt news agency in West Germany who took a nice picture of me. I didn't find out about it until a few weeks later, thanks to my professor Wittlich, who was then giving a guest lecture somewhere in Scandinavia, I think he was in Stockholm. And then when the school year started, in the autumn of 1969, we met at school. Professor Wittlich took me aside and asked me if I had taken part in these demonstrations. I nodded and was very surprised how he knew about it, since he had been to Scandinavia. And he pointed out to me that on the way home he had got hold of an issue of Die Welt in which I had appeared - insignificant me, on the front page. He just warned me to take care of myself. I, of course, was alarmed. Well, somehow, shortly after that, a special edition of Red Law came out, called They Did Not Pass. And there, well, I also had the pleasure of appearing on the front page, where the picture was accompanied by a text to the effect that a reporter from a West German agency could take pictures among the provocateurs. So there you go, I was the provocateur."
"All of a sudden, the communist leaders declared that the Western imperialists wanted to harm us by spreading potato beetle. So instead of school lessons, we went around the field in these lines looking for the potato beetle. Before that, we were taught what it looks like - the American beetle. No one found anything despite the fact that it was promised beforehand that whoever found the potato beetle would get some big reward. Instead, we carried ladybugs in. The teacher was upset because a ladybug looks different from a potato beetle and somehow he knew we were already making fun of him. So it was kind of... it was clear even to those kids that what is officially promoted should be taken with a grain of salt and, if possible, made fun of."
Pavol Černý was born on 12th August 1942 in Trstená, Slovakia. His father was one of those who openly showed their antipathy to the communist regime. These attitudes did not go unnoticed, which became apparent when the witness wanted to study art history at university. He was not allowed to do so and had to settle for studying agriculture, which was not subject to as much ideological control as the humanities. However, he eventually got to art history - he was accepted for a distance learning course while working as an animal keeper at the Bratislava zoo, where he stayed until he moved to Prague. There, in 1969, he joined the demonstrations against the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops. He was photographed by a reporter from the German newspaper Die Welt while building a barricade. The same photograph was subsequently published by Red Law with the witness on the front page. He decided to emigrate to the West for security reasons and did not return from a student trip to France. With the help of friends in the field, he settled in Holland, where he completed his doctoral studies in art history. After his studies, he took a job at Radio Free Europe in Munich, where he worked as an editor for ten years. After the Revolution, he settled in Olomouc, where he joined the newly established Department of Art History at Palacký University. In 2024, at the time of recording, he was still living in Olomouc and teaching at the university.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
