František Ingr

* 1949

  • "Just after my son was born, I think, a co-worker called me soon afterwards and said: 'You're fixing the house too, aren't you, I'm fixing the house too...' And then he started to say, 'You go [to church], but don't bring up the kids like that,' and things like that. And I said to him, 'You know what, I'm not a comedian.' And that's basically the end of it. Then I know that one of the bosses said that if I hadn't been so religious, I could have had some kind of promotion, but I didn't want one."

  • "Of course they took them from Kroměříž and transported them to northern and western Bohemia. I was in Kroměříž when I was a child, but I never saw it again until I was a schoolboy, when my father's sister came to visit. And what was so interesting was that the next day, a member of the National Security Corps, as they used to say, or a policeman, came to check whether dad had registered the visit in the house book, even though she had a home right or it was written directly that she had her permanent residence there. But immediately someone reported that there was a visitor, and if one didn't register someone who was there, there could be a penalty."

  • "In Vacenovice, as long as I can remember, I know that my classmate's family were farmers or peasants. One day the whole village gathered around their house because the militiamen came and took their animals, wagons, complete equipment and everything. I can just see the lady to this day, standing in the doorway with the five children, crying about how they took everything from her. Then there was another case, and we didn't even know this, I didn't find out until many years later, that we came to school and a young, eager teacher said, 'Kids, we're not going to school today, we're going camping in the forest.' And years later I learned that they wanted to liquidate again some farmer who lived near the school, so that we as children wouldn't see it."

  • "Such were the experiences that afterwards, when there was a greeting of the room, one of the priests shook hands with a neighbour in priestly dress and recognised his investigator there. So they were fitted in between as well. Even at the organ, one stood to conduct - if there was any improper speech, the organ would kick in. So that was the priestly pilgrimage."

  • "We then went to Milotice in the second grade, so there was already a civics subject there. Nowadays, it may be called something similar, but at that time the content of civic education was mainly convincing children that religion was nonsense, that they shouldn't go to church and so on. And if parents wanted to sign kids up for religion, there was maybe a week or two set aside for that, and anybody who missed that week here in June didn't have a chance."

  • "My father worked almost all his life in the oil mines, there were many mining towers between Vacenovice and Milotice, and even gas was said to have been extracted there. I know from stories that there was even a gas filling station there. That is, during the war, at that time, when cars ran on natural gas, even from Hradiště they used to go there to fill their bombs with natural gas. Well, as he worked, he was also deployed in Germany during World War II, somewhere near Kiel near Flensburg, and also on those towers. And things were getting very hot there at that time, there were Anglo-American air raids and of course they were bombing those oil derricks and all that. He managed to escape home after thirteen months, and in such an interesting way that even under Hitler it was free on May Day, he had the night before - because he knew they wouldn't be looking for him - and so he managed to get the train to the border, to Prague and home."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Staré Město, 12.12.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 36:16
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Zlín, 25.03.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:27:16
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

While greeting the room, the priest recognized his investigator among the people in the church

Frantisek Ingr, 1990
Frantisek Ingr, 1990
zdroj: archive of a witness

František Ingr was born on 6 September 1949 in Kyjov. His father, František Ingr Sr., was a forced labourer in Kiel, Germany, during the Second World War, from where he managed to escape in 1944 and return to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, where he was tracked down by the Nazis and again deployed in the war industry - this time in the Semtín powder factory near Pardubice, where František Ingr Sr. survived the explosion of the ammunition warehouses only by chance. František Ingr Jr. grew up in the 1950s. In Vacenovice in South Moravia, where the family lived at the time, he witnessed the forced collectivisation of agriculture as a child. The Ingrs were practicing Catholics and as such faced pressure and persuasion not to raise their children in the faith. František Ingr had to enter a different field than he wished because of his poor cadre evaluation. He entered military service just before the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. After he left the barracks two years later, he and his wife Dagmar became involved in the production and distribution of religious samizdat, working with former political prisoner and parish priest František Adamec. In 1985, as a technician and one of the organizers, he took part in the preparations for the April pilgrimage to Velehrad, as well as the main June pilgrimage, which went down in modern history as one of the largest anti-communist demonstrations in the then Czechoslovakia. Despite the fact that the entire area was guarded and monitored by State Security, František Ingr took audio recordings and photographs at both events. The family openly proclaimed their Catholic faith throughout the entire period of normalisation. Son František regularly went to secret Catholic meetings - Salesian Chaloupky. During the Velvet Revolution of 1989, František Ingr took part in the events first in Uherské Hradiště, where as an amateur radio operator he eavesdropped on police radios, and later - on 25 November 1989 - he went to Prague, where he witnessed the pontifical mass on the occasion of the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia, and on the same day also a massive demonstration in support of the Civic Forum on Letná Plain. In the post-coup era, František Ingr became an acolyte and also became involved as a photographer in the project Man and Faith, which documents Christian events in the Czech Republic through images. At the same time, in 2024 he was still working as a guide in the new Church of the Holy Spirit in the Old Town, where he lived at that time alongside his wife Dagmar.