"First of all, there was a request that my brother and I be expelled from school. My brother was already in his fourth year, they invited him to the dean's office and told him: ‘Listen, you are already in your fourth year, the state has already invested a lot in you. Realize that one day you will be a doctor of the People's Democratic Republic, and act accordingly. 'I sneered at them. As I told you, I made entry exams to study nuclear physics, then I went to electrics [Faculty of Electrical Engineering CTU] for a year and I ended up at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physic. And behind my back, Podebrady sent a letter to the nuclear school, because they knew that I was doing entrance exams there. I don't know which dean's office was lost, but it didn't reach me at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Otherwise, they would definitely fire me after the first year, I was just starting school. So I was so lucky to stay at the school. Dad returned in December fifty-seven. President Zápotocký died, President Novotný came and announced an amnesty. He was amnestied about six weeks before the end of the six-month sentence. He returned to the OÚNZ [District Institute of National Health], but the director of the OÚNZ was strongly communist at the time, so he did not accept it. He then worked in Nymburk, in Milovice and I don't know where everywhere. Every time the headmaster found out, he left. He had a minor heart attack and had to retire on disability, he was sixty-one years old."
"I lived in Žižkov at the time. As a young man, I slept rather deeply. And suddenly it seemed to me at night that planes were flying over me and that they were dusting the fields. I wondered why the field right above me had to be powdered, and I didn't even wake up. I got up in the morning, went to work, went to the bus and there was a bunch of people; everyone was silent. Shortly before that, they increased the price of public transport tickets from sixty pennies to the crown. And I thought, 'The bus drivers are going to strike even now.' So I thought I'd walk. I came to a newsstand and bought the Young Front and read there: ‘Without the knowledge of the President of the Republic, without the knowledge of the Prime Minister, without the knowledge of the CPC Secretary, five troops crossed the border on the night of the twentieth to the twenty-first [August 1968]. I went down, now I think it's called the Seifertova street and I got to Štvanice and then I've seen tanks running there. I thought, 'I don't have anything to eat,' so I ran to a large supermarket and found three cans of fish there, everything was sold out so I could have something to eat. I didn't know what it would look like. When I was returning across the Štvanice Bridge, the tanks were already standing there, it was hard to walk. There was a real fear of that. So I got on the bus and went to Poděbrady, where I was for about five days, and after five days, when the situation got more stable and I started going to work again."
"We were on holiday in the year 1955 year near Piešťany. The village is called Brunovce. We had acquaintances there. My mother had rheumatism, so she visited the spa in Piešťany. At that time there was no collective farm, in Slovakia it was called JRD, a unified peasant cooperative. And it was right at that time that they founded them. We lived there with a peasant who rented us a room. This was the district of Nové Mesto nad Váhom. The peasant was taken by those who persuaded him to enter the JRD, Nové Mesto nad Váhom. He was so called „massaged“ there in two hours until the morning in Czech. But it was the farmers, who they did not want it because they were fused with their land. He was brought home at two o'clock in the morning and was there again at half past seven. We were having breakfast in a backyard like this and he was sleeping because he was brought in at two in the morning, so he had to sleep it off. My father said to them, 'I ask you why you are torturing the man so much, for he has all day to work hard. You're chasing him like Stalin did. ' It was past the cult of personality. That sentence was enough for them to come to him that he was inciting at night and to lock him up for half a year."
Vladimir Rudaev was born on November 3, 1938 in Prague. However, his home was in Podebrady, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. After graduating in 1956, he went to Prague to study at the CTU Faculty of Electrical Engineering. After a year, he transferred to the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. In 1957, the communist regime sent Vladimir‘s father behind prison bars. The reason was that he stood up for a peasant who refused to join a unified agricultural cooperative. He spent half a year in prison. Although at first it seemed that Vladimir would have to finish his studies, he could eventually continue. After graduation, he became a recognized expert in the field of seismology. From 1961 to 2011, Vladimír Rudajev worked as a researcher emeritus at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. For his professional work, he received the František Pošepný Medal of Honor for Merit in Geological Sciences. In 2012, he retired and returned to his hometown of Podebrady. He died on October 5th, 2023.
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!
