Mgr. David Ručka

* 1972

  • It can be said that emotionally I experienced it quite strongly and of course, I was on the side of those federalists and on the side of those who wanted a referendum, and on the other hand I somehow agreed from a practical point of view that it is already behind us, because that period before, until 1992, perhaps as early as 1991, was so tense in terms of those relations. Although I have never met in Slovakia, where I used to go, with some negative feeling that I did not meet any resentment or expression towards Czech-speaking people, neither at that time nor after, when he was Slota.

  • Our class, she taught English and German, it was probably because she had to have a better overview because she knew those languages and really, she mastered them very well, she was particularly good. And sometimes she had to force us to join the SSM, for example with which some had a problem and refused. I remember one of my classmates who simply refused to join the SSM and that she put some pressure on him, at the same time feeling from some such her remarks that her inner opinion was completely different. It was in several teachers, but there were such classics, I would say communists who went their own way. For example, we had military training, there we just learned that there are some annoying radios and still Russian. We had compulsory Russian from the fifth grade, and it continued at the grammar school. Of course, I am glad now that I can still read something in Cyrillic, and I even graduated from Russian and English. In that Russian, the subject matter we took over and the texts were still about how the Soviet Union is the best country in the world, what advanced economy they have, what advanced technology they have, namely flying, the Gagarin and Tereshkova and that was over and over. Just then, we became more and more funny about it, and one took it less and less seriously and more and more than a caricature.

  • There was such a small problem, because I did not go into Sparks, I did not even go into a Pioneer, and it started to get a little tense when I went to high school, because it was impossible for a person who was not in the Pioneer to get to some high school or grammar school, as planned for me, or I imagined. And then it was solved in such an interesting way that a tourist club was created, which of course also had to be a pioneer organization, and I enjoyed it, because I just enjoyed tourism, so I joined the tourist club and over time I became an official pioneer. And what was so funny about it was that mostly those pioneers entered the union in masse, in the cinema, specifically in our city there was a big cinema, and everyone met there, and they were there, they had their oaths in masse. And I had a pioneering oath alone with my group, which was about ten people in that tourist club, I still remember. I recited it myself in front of the cinema in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí as part of our tourist trip. So, I was like a dissident that I joined late, but then my entry was individual I would say in a pioneer organization.

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Ručka David

    (audio)
    délka: 01:35:10
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th century
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I like freedom, I care that people can live their lives in the way they want, without hurting others.

The grandfather of the witness, Jozef Budzik, who transported Jews to Poland at the beginning of World War II, dressed in an American uniform.
The grandfather of the witness, Jozef Budzik, who transported Jews to Poland at the beginning of World War II, dressed in an American uniform.
zdroj: Private archive of witness

David Ručka was born in 1972. He grew up in the foothills of the Beskydy Mountains in the former village of Dobrá (Frýdek-Místek district). As a child, he refused to attend the Sparks, for which he was expelled. He took the pioneer vow himself as a member of the tourist club. At the time, he wore a pioneer scarf out of conviction, and he considered the western world as a real enemy. At the beginning of his studies in high school, his views began to change because of the Voice of America and Free Europe radio broadcasts. Even though the rebellion awoke in him, he still doubted the correctness of his new conviction. At the time of the Velvet Revolution, the witness was about 17 years old. He fully supported the changes that the revolution was supposed to bring, but he was always uncomfortable with publicly subscribing to his opinion, so he refused to sign the petition A few sentences and he also did not like to wear a tricolour. In the post-revolutionary years, the witness is rated as the best in his life, mainly because of his life at the university campus. He graduated from the Faculty of Education at the University of Ostrava, study program of History and Basics of Social Sciences for Secondary Schools. In 1996 as part of the Camp America the student program he met his Slovak wife. Three years later, he got a job as an English teacher at the Primary School in Ivanka pri Dunaji, where he married in 2000 and lives and works there with his two children to this day. An important part of his life is caring for the environment. This interest developed in him even when he lived in the Czech Republic. After moving to Slovakia, he became an official member of the forest protection association VLK. He describes himself as a green liberal who does not approve of any oppression of minorities for various reasons. On the other hand, he speaks of himself as a conservative person who cares most about the traditional family.