Pavel Döllinger

“They didn’t admit our Martina to kindergarten. They wrote that she did not meet some criteria. Interestingly, we were both employed in the education sector. My wife is a teacher and I was also employed at a school. I wrote a letter to that kindergarten’s principal that if they did not admit my daughter, I would find out – and I had the means to do so – whether all the children had really fulfilled the criteria according to that rule. Adding that we both worked in schooling and that I saw no reason why they should not admit my daughter. I threatened them in a way. They eventually admitted her to this kindergarten.”

“These were means of education. I feel sorry that today, activities in troops rely rather on the first impressions. The educational aspect is being lost in some troops. A troop’s primary task was to educate. Be it through a summer camp game, it always had to guide them to something. It was not just for the game’s sake, for the lavish costumes. In some of the camps, the purpose of camp games is getting lost.”

“If you look at the ČIN magazines, the content reflects upon the period of 1970 through 1989. Then there was a pamphlet called Fleur-de-lis Behind Barbed Wire, dealing with stories of individuals who had been political prisoners, those who had experience with communist prisons. We were distributing it to leaders in order to show them what scouting should be, what its objectives were. It was intended for these new young leaders, to explain to them what it was about. Because in 1989 many of them came from Pionýr (communist organization for youth – transl.’s note), from the sports union, or from Svazarm (army sports union). And during this period of the past twenty years every troop did what they wanted and they thought nobody was doing it better.”

“I said that this couldn’t go on and I went to České Budějovice to the Communist Party regional committee. I thought I had nothing to lose, we wanted to have the summer camp – we had camped at the same place the year before, so why was it not possible this year? I went to speak directly with the secretary. I told him about the troubles we had with the chairman of the local committee in Kaplice and that we were surprised that he didn’t want to issue us permission to organize our camp. The man asked me where we were from, what we did, and then he said: ´You know, there are many summer camps in the border regions, and many of them claim they are youth clubs, but we know that they are boy scouts.´ I asked him: ´Who are they?´ I didn’t tell him my year of birth was 1949. ´Well, it’s such an organization, they are causing us trouble here all the time.´”