"Of course, from the beginning of 1989, with Palach Week, the attention was getting even sharper, continuously towards the anniversary of 21 August, and then, when the anniversary of 28 October came around, I went to Prague right to see it, I wanted to go to the demonstration. I remember that very precisely. That demonstration was held in a similar way to the previous ones. That is to say, something happened there, in the end it was dispersed by the police. I remember that the people were walking down a street to Old Town Square, which was blocked off. There were militiamen standing there, they let us go, then the baton beating started. People were fleeing in various directions, hiding in houses. Then in the evening we met at a friend's flat, and at the same time we wew watching the news, not the TV news, but samizdat news. We talked very much about what had happened that day, and I remember the intensely mixed feelings. On the one hand, such euphoria that something had happened, that a process had been clearly articulated, and at the same time such despair in that they were saying, it's still the same. Now there are still two thousand people going there - and it's not really heading anywhere. So it's different from the years before '89 when nothing or almost nothing was happening. Now the two thousand people go there, the same people go there, and it has no perspective."
"I remember that there were several such platforms, and one existed on the ground of some evangelical houses of prayer, that they had another space for more informal gatherings in addition to the services and the service space - and that was quite a good platform to do readings or to do music performances at various underground festivals. I remember such a festival in Pyšely. In Pyšely in a pub, it lasted from Friday to Sunday, we got there sometime on Saturday morning. By that time you could see that there was this long snake of various long-haired guys with guitars coming from the train, and now it was gathering in this pub where nothing was happening at that moment, but it had been happening before. So there were various people sleeping on tables in sleeping bags, and now the area was being set up for the evening, and then the bands were changing, we were drinking. Or I remember an underground exhibition in Třebíč in a garden. There was an exhibition of art objects, then there was a theatre of two actors. People were sitting there in the garden, and the remarkable thing was that someone was filming it from a tree in the neighbouring garden with a handheld camera. Then I remember that they brought Ivan Martin Jirous, who was under protective surveillance at the time, from nearby Stará Říše, and he was there reading from his Swan Songs."
"In short, one classmate didn't come back after Christmas because he had gone to Sweden with his parents and never came back. Which caused a big commotion in the school and various gentlemen started to show up, wondering who knew the boy and if they had known ahead of time and if there were any others like that. The class teacher came in and handed out papers and told us that she was going to ask us some questions and that of course it was Anonymous. You know when you write it by hand how anonymous it is even if you don't sign it. They were questions like, what do you think about emigration? Are you a believer and who is your role model? It was kind of testing who was there. I wrote it as I thought it, yes, I'm a believer... I didn't have Pavka Korchagin as a role model - and then the teacher came in, she was evaluating it, and she said, 'Well, the result is actually quite satisfactory, except for one case.' That was me, but by that time I had more or less put up with it. And the other side of it was that at the same time I didn't make any hopes of being admitted at the Faculty of Arts or law school or anything like that. I was more or less counting on studying Technical [University] in advance, because nobody was going to be interested in the ideological screening there."
Pavel Kolmačka was born on 8 October 1962 in Prague as the third child of his parents Bohuslava and František Kolmačka. His father worked at the Research Institute of Communication Technologies and his mother was a first grade teacher at primary school. After completing his primary school education, he was admitted to the grammar school in Botičská Street in Prague thanks to his excellent grades and good results in knowledge School Olympic Games. His mother, in order to be allowed to work in education, was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia until 1968. Both parents were believers and led their children to a critical view of the normalization times. Due to his bad cadre priofile, he gave up the Faculty of Arts and started studying at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in 1981. While still studying at the grammar school he had become interested in literature and started writing poems. At university he met like-minded classmates. Through friends, his poems found their way into the samizdat Almanac of Group XXVI. and Vokno, and he published a samizdat collection In margine together with other poets. He met with students of the Evangelical Theological Faculty. He attended flat seminars, author readings or went to the evangelical pastor (without state permission) Alfred Kocáb, who worked in a boiler room but who led several pupils in contemplative prayer. State Security (StB) became interested in his close friends, but he himself was not interrogated. In 1985, he finished his studies and was sent to Prešov to start his military service. He was looking for a quiet place to write and wanted to escape Prague, so he stayed in Prešov, where he worked in an institute for the mentally handicapped as a gardener‘s assistant and later as an orderly. There he met his future wife, Jana Roháľová. Together they used to follow the political events in the world and he personally took part in the violently dispersed demonstration in Prague on 28 October 1989. After the revolution, they moved to their grandparents‘ house in Chrudichromy near Boskovice where their four children were born. He worked as a nurse and orderly in a nursing home in Boskovice, and later as an editor at the Catholic magazine Velehrad. He translated from English and after a few months of study in Stuttgart he began to translate books by German authors. Later he took up religious studies, taught at the Bishop‘s Grammar School in Letovice and at the same time lectured at the Higher School of Journalism (VOŠP). He has written several collections of poetry and his books have been translated into various world languages. Currently (2023) he works as a private language teacher, translates and writes.
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!
