"When the Second World War broke out, he joined the French Foreign Legion, the Moroccan division, the famous Czech company Nazdar, commanded by the French captain Sallé. In the battle of Arras, my grandfather was wounded, badly, he lost his right eye, among other things. And then in the hospital, he met my grandmother - she was French, originally Czech, but she had French citizenship - Eugenia Němčická. They got married and while still in France my uncle Jan was born. Then after the First World War, they went to Czechoslovakia, they lived in Tišnov and my mother was born there, her name was Beatrice. My grandfather received many medals and decorations after the First World War for his participation in combat, for his wounds, and awards for the First Resistance. During the Second World War, he joined the anti-Nazi resistance and was awarded a medal for the Second Resistance. And why do I say that, because I received a decoration from the Minister of Defence in 2016 for the Third Resistance. So the cycle of our family has come full circle. I just hope that my daughters will never need any more medals to receive for the Fourth Resistance."
"My cousin Aleš Vejvodů from Tišnov, I can’t not mention him, he was such a great messenger. He took a job in Žďár and brought us all kinds of materials and we cooperated with him very quickly. So we started to get in touch with the underground. That was our entry. Among other things, he also brought us Infochs, information about Charter 77, documents that the Charter published about its activities. And later on, there were also communications from VONS, the Committee for the Protection of the Unjustly Prosecuted. This was done in such a way that he always brought it to me and I copied it 12 to 14 times - if I had good photocopiers, the black ones - even up to 14 times. And he wanted maybe five copies back, so I gave them to him, and I gave the rest away. And always the two copies, it was claimed that you could identify the typewriter by the two first copies, the sharpest ones. So I always kept the two sharpest ones in my archive and at night I would take them to my grandmother Homolková in Tišnov. And that's why I have such an archive to draw from today, it has all been preserved. That was the beginning in 1978. We started to hang out with people from Brno - and that was the time when the first wave of underground members were signing the Charter. And I didn't find it politically controversial. So I asked Aleš, and he arranged it with my friend Martin in Brno, Martin Podborský, and he arranged it with Jaroslav Šabata, who later became a politician. But at that time he was working in the manual profession and he was collecting the signatures. So we were arranged, I met him here in Brno, and he said: 'I have a big surveillance team on me, we have to get away from them. Well, it was like in a detective story, so we took different trams, until somewhere on the outskirts of Brno, on a plasterboard table in a fourth-grade pub, I wrote: "I agree with the declaration of Charter 77. Vít-Bohumil Homolka, Marxova 918/5 Žďár nad Sázavou 3, I still remember it. But I don't remember the date, I don't remember the exact date. The signature was published in Infoch number 20/78 and it was in October 1978 and the signature became known when Ivan Medek read it on Voice of America. As soon as Ivan Medek read it on the Voice of America, that's when the round of questioning and all that joy began."
"it began right after the signing of the Charter 77. The interrogations became daily, then they shortened it a bit and it became once a week. But sometimes it was quite cruel. I don't understand people, who say, that they weren't scared. When you went in there, you didn't always know what you were in for. There was always some fear - what will they think of today? What will they come up with today? We were always worried. For example, they pressured my parents: denounce this son, otherwise, you'll have problems at work. They had the sophisticated system worked out. I'd come in, the cop would pick me up, we'd go upstairs to the room, he'd question me, and then he'd take me back downstairs. And once they have been painting the corridor and all of a sudden he started slapping me on the back in front of the workers and saying, 'Come back again sometimes!' Little things like that. Or doing annoying things - at work, with people around - they were very good at that. They didn't do anything else all the time."
"There was a book published in the 1970s, it was called Textbook of Criminalistics, and it was just discovered by people from Brno, so I bought it at Square of Liberty, there was a big bookstore there and they were selling it, so I bought it. And so we suddenly found out that the whole interrogation thing was just a game. The room, the interrogation room was sophisticated, there was a chair for the interrogated, a table, a bookcase, and a mirror. The mirror was a window to the other room, where another interrogator was watching, a bad guy, a good guy routine. And now suddenly you were looking at it from a different perspective. But the Bolsheviks found out that we were buying it, so they quickly began to withdraw the book."
"Then mainly students from Brno began to arrive with all sorts of materials and videotapes of the police intervention on Národní třída. I was working on the square at the time. The communists dedicated the square to Klement Gottwald, I don't know why. We had a pub there, it was a kind of a fourth-grade pub, it was already a bit run down, so we played it there - on the top of the fridge there was a video, a real rarity in those times, we borrowed it, and a colour television as well, and we used it to show the intervention on Národní třída. Then we installed a sound system from the windows of Labuť house so the whole square could hear it, people started to gather there and some revolutionary speeches were made. One wanted to hang all the communists, the other wanted to forgive everyone."
Vít-Bohumil Homolka was born on the 12th of April 1956 in Žďár nad Sázavou. His grandfather Bohumil Mareš fought in the First World War in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion, during the Second World War he joined the domestic resistance. After primary school in Žďár, Vít-Bohumil trained to become a waiter and then worked for Restaurants and Canteens (RaJ). From the 1970s he was actively involved in the underground scene, distributing samizdat publications and contributing to their creation. He founded the artistic association Atomic Lamprey (Atomová mihule) in 1978, which transformed into a musical group over time. In the autumn of 1978, he signed Charter 77 and consequently, he had to face a series of interrogations and professional persecution. During the Velvet Revolution, he participated in the public life of Žďár nad Sázavou - he co-founded the local Civic Forum (OF), and he also authored the statement Slovo k dnešku (A Word for Today), which was signed by many Žďár residents. After the revolution, he opened his restaurant and remained active in organizing cultural events. Vít-Bohumil is the author of many books and exhibitions focusing on underground and samizdat works before 1989. In 2016, he received the award for participation in the Third Resistance. At the time of the interview (2022) he lived in Žďár nad Sázavou.
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