"We've published over twenty of them. Interestingly enough, the first title, the first thing that was reproduced like that, which I copied about five or six times, was the text of Charter 77, which I recorded from the Voice of America. Then I listened from a tape recorder and copied it. I remember it was quite short, and I was surprised, this was in late or mid-January 1978, that there wasn't much written, it just quoted laws that were not being followed, and that was all. I didn't understand what was so terrible about it, as the newspapers claimed."
"As an English speaker I needed to practise the language. So when I happened to be in Prague and had a moment, I went to the American Embassy to read the newspaper so that I had a chance to read in English. That's what I told the Secret police. And they said, 'You know, you shouldn't do that, don't do that.' I replied, 'For me it's like going to a candy store or a bakery, I don't care where I go, I'm going to read the newspaper there.' – 'But it is not a bakery, it is the American Embassy,' they argued. Then they even told me repeatedly, 'You know what, comrade, go there, but always tell us before you go there. Then you come and tell us what you read there, who you talked to and what you talked about.' Obviously, in this way they offered me cooperation. They were quite unhappy when I replied, 'Yes, I'll go there, but I won't tell anybody about it.'"
"We were standing on the sidewalk of the main street where the Russians were passing through Jičín on their way to Prague. I was holding the poster up like this, suddenly their convoy stopped. A truck stopped in front of us, a truck with windows that were three-quarters boarded up and empty above. There were only the eyes of a Russian soldier. As the truck stopped, I turned the poster around, and the poster was less than a meter from those eyes. The eyes suddenly disappeared and there was a machine gun barrel pointing at me. To this day, I still feel it. They say that fear totally paralyzes a person. It's true. I peripherally saw people fleeing to the sides, and I was standing there, unable to make any movement."
"I went through a very thorough interrogation, maybe five hours, and it was not just about these books. It was terrible for me to see those three books lying on the police table not being able to take them back. On the other hand, it was obvious that the books had been read. I was happy that I had at least done some educational work, that one or two of the policemen had read the books and had become acquainted with the work of Škvorecký and Hrabal. As usual, there was a good cop and a bad cop, I had to laugh about it. The bad one wasn't there all the time, he came in about four or five times during the interview. They asked me about everything and they knew everything."
Josef Novotný was born on 29 December 1949 in Jičín into a family of teachers. In 1968 he graduated and began studying Czech and English language at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. He was struck by the August occupation of Czechoslovakia and subsequently distributed leaflets and wrote signs in Jičín. In November 1968, he was arrested during a demonstration in Prague and experienced his first interrogation. He graduated from the Charles University in 1973, got married and had a son in 1976. He began working as a teacher at the Secondary School of Economics in Jičín. He recorded the text of Charter 77 from a Voice of America broadcast and distributed it to friends. In the late 1970s, he was interrogated by the Secret police for his visits to the American embassy, where he used to go to read the newspaper. From 1983, he copied and distributed banned literature, such as the works of Václav Havel and Josef Škvorecký. From 1985, he published the samizdat edition Nos with Radek Schovánek. On several occasions he brought books published by exile publishers back from Budapest. In 1988, three books hidden in his car were confiscated on his way back from Vienna and he was interrogated for five hours in Jičín. In October 1988, he was hit by a water cannon at a demonstration in Prague. In November 1989, he became a member of the Civic Forum in Jičín and in December he was co-opted as a deputy to the Federal Assembly. From 1990 he was active in municipal politics in Jičín. He played amateur theatre in the J. K. Tyl Theatre and in the Závěsné Theatre. In 2021 he lived in Jičín.
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!
