"It turned out completely differently, because I came to the bishopric in Brno, where the bishop of Brno, Karel Skoupý, was already under guard. The policemen were on the mezzanine floor, where one could walk normally, and another policeman walked around the courtyard, where one could go through the kitchen via the back staircase. I was trying to get in there at the time, and because I knew the place, I went to the kitchen, and he stopped me and said 'Where are you going?' I said, to Mrs. Štěpánková, and what do you want from her? She's from Horní Štěpánov, he waved his hand and I went up the back staircase. The bishop, when I told him, said, "I don't agree with going to the general seminary. He thought, as we all thought, such a thing can't last longer than two years, four years at the most, but then it lasted forty years."
"When the Soviet army was here, we were evicted at home in the attic and they occupied the bottom. It was some major of the Soviet army and he had a 'pucflek' and adjutants with him, so there were three of them. They occupied the downstairs rooms and wanted to bulldoze the neighbours, they wanted a 'četyre komnata', fortunately they didn't do it. What I experienced at the time was their politruk, I don't know who it was exactly, from their military police apparently. He came and opened the door with his foot, and he lifted his foot and kicked the doorhandle, and the major was shaking in front of him, he was all green, and we watched it."
"That was with priest Kusala, after the technical auxiliary battalion, he joined in Jamný as an administrator and then a guy came in, and when he came in, I went into the next room, the door was open. The guy started telling him that he was escaping from the prison and that he was the son of some important person in the education department, and he had spoke some things like that, and that he hadn't eaten for two days, so he went and cut him a slice of bread and poured milk into a cup and brought it to him, and the guy left. He comes up to me and says, did you hear that? I heard it. What do you think? I think he's a cop. Well, I think so too, but what now? There was nobody in the village to report it, so he got on his motorbike and rode to the neighbouring village, to Zhoře, where there was a policeman. The policeman was drunk in a pub, there was no use talking to him at all, so he reported it to the mayor of Zhoře himself. He was eventually arrested for it, he got two years."
"Then I went to visit him, I entered the gate that led to the yard, and immediately a machine gun hit me from behind. Well, I didn't feel well. With the bullets in my back I was led to the parish kitchen, and there I was of course questioned about what, why and who? As far as I was concerned, nothing, they didn't care at all when I told them that I was a student, as it was written on my ID, and that I was on holiday, and that when I was going by I stopped to see him. I didn't see him at all, and then they took me out and that was the end of it for me. But later on, when I met him, after he had been released and was working at Sláma's sawmill, as a priest without state permission of course, I learned from him that he had been taken to Prague and they wanted him to be secretary to the then administrator, actually he was a bishop, I can't remember the name (Antonín Eltschkner). That they led him to a pond and threatened to drown him, tied up, of course, and wanted him to work as a secretary and secretly serve them, which he refused, so he was then imprisoned, although without trial (two years of internment in Želiva).
Stanislav Janků was born on 7th May 1931 in Boskovice to parents Ludmila and Stanislav Janků. At the end of the war, several Red Army soldiers stayed at their home. Soon after the war he joined the Scout organization and in all periods when it was allowed, he was actively involved in its activities. After graduating from the Boskovice grammar school in 1950, he worked for half a year in the so-called coal brigade. He wanted to study theology and become a Catholic priest, but during the period of the emerging communist totalitarianism, the bishop did not recommend it during a secret visit. While visiting the priest Josef Valerián, he had an unpleasant encounter with State Security investigators in connection with the Babica case. He almost became a suspect in the case of the conviction of another priest, František Kusala. In 1956, he graduated from the University of Technology in Prague and began working at Sigma Lutín. After marrying Marie Vičarová in 1959, he got a job at ČKD Blansko, where he worked until his retirement in 1991. He worked on the design of storage pumps and designed, for example, a reverse turbine for the famous Dlouhé stráně pumped storage power plant in the Jeseníky Mountains. During the normalization period, his daughter Marie was not admitted to grammar school because of her religion. After the revolution in 1989, he studied theology and since 1995, he has been serving as a permanent deacon in the parish of Boskovice. He lived in his family home with his daughter‘s family. Stanislav Janků died on 23rd January 2025.
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!
