"I had taken 53 exams and I had one single exam left in steel bridges to complete that study. I was called before the disciplinary committee and that moment, I don't know, I'm being a bit dramatic, but that's what it was. I was pretty cool, I was at home shaving in the bathroom and my mom came in and said, 'You've got a letter here - a summons to appear before some disciplinary committee. It's tomorrow, the next day.' And I said, 'It's for the placement notice,' and I didn't care any more about it and I went in. Now I saw a classmate, he went against me, he didn't even greet me, and he was a party member, I already knew that. I said to him, 'Look, it's about expulsion, isn't it?' And he nodded. Now I stood in front of the disciplinary committee, there were four professors sitting there that I knew, the dean that taught me, well, and they expelled me from that school. I asked them if it was by all votes and they said yes, by all votes. So all those professors, who I had thought were decent people, voted to expel me. - "What reason did they give you?"-"Your background and family background and negative attitude towards Czechoslovak Youth Union do not guarantee that you would meet the requirements set for graduate students."
"That's pretty much in my memory. On Tuesday evening a lieutenant from the Slaný garrison came there and said he was going to look at the flat. 'Which one?' 'Well, this one. I'm moving in here on Thursday.' Like in our house. So my father, terrified, ran to the national committee and was actually sort of informed that we should be moved somewhere near Rumburk. Anyway, my grandmother had another house there opposite the farmhouse and he arranged with them to let us into that house. And indeed, on that Thursday the army arrived there with trucks and they moved out our wardrobes with clothes in them, everything was moved to my grandmother's house."
"My father was arrested in 1943 and I think he was arrested in January and tried. So he moved around to different prisons, but eventually he was freed by the German court and came back after a year on the 23 of December. He returned home the same year. And the Germans... So it was a little bit different with the farm than what was going on during the communist collectivization, because they put a German administrator there, it was called Zwangsverwaltung in Hut, Hut is a hat, or forced administration in Klobuky [Hats in English, trans.]. And then when my father came back from the prison, the Germans handed the farm over to us again, so he came back in a very miserable state, but actually from 1944 onwards the farm functioned normally again."
Here I have a picture with trombone (Genoa photo attached). First they took in Klobůkách farm, a field. In the house they let us live, it was subject to a different regime. In my head I fixed Tuesday evening came from such poručíček slánských barracks that goes look for an apartment, actually the villa where he has to live. Father went to committee, where he was offered accommodation in Rumburk. Finally, he is persuaded that we could move into the house no. 6, which belonged to her grandmother. On Thursday, soldiers came and moved us one day. Cabinets arrived with clothing. One of the soldiers was a musician, and when he saw on the piano trombone, so we are moving to have played. So, there it seemed. Eviction from the farm but it did not end. In Klobůkách we were undesirable persons and eventually we moved better. The village developed such subtle pressure, under the window sat a certain gentleman, who had smoked like, but listened to what was said by us, it was not pleasant. Father was not allowed to work in the district Salty, first worked at the State Farm Velvary. When issued Smrkovský, at the time director of state farms regulation that former Republicans must work in state farms, found a place in the collection materials at the train station in Slany. What there just did not know if pulling sheets or made in administration. At that time I went to grammar school in Slaný, and when I went on the train, I saw him there in a blue coat. It seemed to me unworthy of him, but he took it and carried it pretty well, at least outwardly. Psychologically, it's not broken. The mother said of him that he is a man in bad weather.
The first such memory is on the political process after the war. It was the forty-seventh year. I myself took it pretty hard. At the time I walked into the gymnasium quarter in Prague Velvarský street because Slany been some epidemics (Ed. Typhoid) and the gymnasium was closed. So my parents gave to Prague. In Prague, the process is perceived very sensitively. When I came to school, classmates talked about the process. Then grandfather was freed. And then I very well remember his funeral, which was in October 1947. In October there was a great heat. In Klobukách farmhouse was made catafalque, on which stood Sokol, an honor guard. The village square and the farm was full of people. It was such a last revolt of free life compared to what followed. Although he died, his person is physically gone, but we bear the message further.
Question grandfather to me because I bearer of the same name, fell many times. I knew him as a child. He died in the year 47, when I was thirteen years old, so I got him just childhood memories. They lived in Lisovicích, we lived in Klobukách.
Malypetr of Cap, including family Stránský (Stránský family lived in Dejvice in Prague), acted as one compact family. Grandpa and Grandma lived in Lisovicích and we are there for them, rode a bicycle. It was six kilometers. In my childhood memories of his grandfather he did not speak like a politician at all, but from my perspective it was a very good man. His workshop tools-tools I have at home today. Sometimes Stránští lived in Lisovicích, sometimes in our Klobůkách and those families are intermingled in this way. Grandparents us Klobukách also often visited. This binds my childhood memories of his grandfather's accuracy, I said to him inherited. Carriage ride, and when they arrive at six o'clock for dinner, certainly in the six they arrived.
We thought communism couldn‘t last. It lasted for forty years
Jan Malypetr was born on 9 November 1934 in Prague. He was the grandson of Jan Malypetr, a prominent First Republic politician and the last pre-Mnich chairman of the National Assembly. Until 1954 he lived in Klobuky near Slaný, where his father farmed the family farm. After 1948, the family suffered the same fate as many other farmers families - expropriation of the farm and forced eviction. After graduating from the Slaný grammar school in 1952, he studied trombone at the State Conservatory of Music in Prague and at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague. He was expelled from the university for political reasons shortly before graduation and only after completing his military service and working on construction sites in the working professions was he able to complete his studies. In Prague he worked as a trombonist in a number of prestigious dance orchestras. After obtaining his university education, he became a designer, first in the sugar industry and later at the State Institute of Transport Design. His specialty was railway bridges. In 1961 he got married. With his wife Eva he had two children - a son and a daughter. In 1998 he became a member of Civic Democratic party. He was elected to the Prague 10 City Council for this party and ran for the Senate in 2004. In 2023 he was living in Prague.
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!