Jakub Ruml

"We had about eight house searches, during which they broke down the door at four o'clock in the morning, without ringing, without knocking, without us knowing what was going on. They broke down the door and ran into all three rooms and started searching. It took until maybe the afternoon. They just showed you a paper saying they were allowed. And then there were lots of things happening just out of spite. We were fed up with it, of course. When a bunch of people, around ten of them, breaks down your door, put on gloves and starts digging through your mom's underwear. That’s when she started screaming. And then they really stopped, because she said, `I'm going to scream until you stop it. Look through the place, take all the papers, the folders, but don't go through my laundry.' Then it got to the point where they stormed in in September 1989, saying that Lidové noviny was a hostile newspaper, and they were accusing my dad of producing and distributing it. During the last house search, my wife was there, and little Terezka, who was about a year old, was riding her little push bike between them. My dad was taken away, but he still managed to give me a few points for the new issue of Lidové noviny, because my brother wasn't at home, he rather disappeared somewhere. I wrote it down carefully, it surprised me that they let us do that. Then they took him away. Then the search took another four or five hours. That was quite funny, little Tereza was pulling on their uniforms, on their trousers. She was undressing them. We had a dog, Babeta. My mother took the stand of passive resistance, she didn't communicate with them. Then she left for the cottage and I picked her up during the day. I could see how it affected everyone, how nervous the cops were, just to get it over with."

"That period [after the arrest of Jiří Ruml and Jan Ruml in 1981] was more difficult as my mother and I were the only ones left, as the two of them were arrested. And so the problem of how to provide for everything began. Mainly financially, I was working as an economist in a printing company in Slezská at that time. I didn't have a high salary. My mother was on disability pension. I tried to make some extra money in football, I coached the young juniors of Vyšehrad and got about a thousand crowns a month. We had to ask for help from our friends. My mother was a brave woman and she got into the 'Women of Charter 1977' club. She cooperated at a high level with various solidarity campaigns, getting sponsorships. The wives of the men who were arrested got together, Kamila Bendová, Anna Šabatová, Petr Uhl's wife. There was some kind of a fund established to support these mothers who had husbands or sons in prison. So we received a certain amount of money from that to support our livelihood. It wasn't much, definitely not some kind of fortune, but it was decent money which could provide us with a normal life. Moreover, we had to pay for two lawyers, because they were not allowed to have one shared lawyer, which was also very difficult. Arranging double prison packages, arranging visits once every three months. All this cost a lot of money. The fund was used to support these separated families."

"We know for a fact that the Charter was a movement that was formed spontaneously around 1975-1977, that’s when a group of people who were willing to fight for democracy got together and signed the document. But that was not the most important thing. There was a perfect collaboration between different young people, whether they were people from Porta, artists, singers, writers, parish priests, or post-communists removed from the party. And suddenly you found out that the people in this community were united when approaching the resistance. It doesn't matter if they're Catholic, underground, or former communist. They were getting together and in groups. It was a communion of souls. The main idea was to do something about the regime. And we found out that it was possible, because the communists were reacting to it. They condemned it. They made all these different anticharters. That meant there was a reaction, which made more people join in. The community was great. Those who were afraid at least sympathized. Never before had such an association been formed in our country."

"Then, by coincidence, I was at a trade union ball with my wife, it was really by coincidence. And all of a sudden a young guy beckoned at me and pointed at me like this. And he had like five bodyguards around him. So I thought:‘What is this?’ And I went there with my wife and he said, 'Your wife can wait, you sit down.' I sat down and he said, 'Today I'm appointing you as the head coach of the youth team of Sparta Prague.' And I just stared at him. Because after school I thought I would try it somewhere in a youth team, of course, as I enjoyed it, I wanted to do it my whole life. But I didn’t think that Mr. Petr Vlach, who, at that time, was the biggest animal amongst those officials, would call me and tell me that I would be the head coach, that he had some recommendations. Well, I knew there was something behind it, of course. Because my brother was the Home Secretary at the time."

"I went for an interrogation, they had already taken them [my brother and father] away and I went to Ruzyně for the interrogation. Of course I was shaking because it was not pleasant. There were actually two of them who interrogated me, as it was in the movie Kolya, if you've seen it. You should watch it, they still broadcast it. The scene when Mr. Svěrák was interrogated. One is a good guy and the other one is bad. And their behavior was horrible. One of them tried to flatter you, he kept saying: 'Mr Ruml, can't you say at least something? And where was it meant for? And who was supposed to distribute it? And who arranged it? You’re a postman, I bet you know.‘ And then I couldn’t listen to it anymore, I was like 'look', from the very beginning I took a position of passive resistance. That's the only way to communicate with them. So I said that I would not testify and that I would sign a report, only if they showed me, that it said that I would not testify. Because they were very sneaky. Then the other one started interrogating me, the bad one. He immediately started yelling at me about what was I thinking, being against the state and against the working people. And I didn't talk to them, I just listened to everything, and after four hours they let me out of Ruzyně. The psychological pressure was terrible."

"We as a family, really stuck together, even extraordinarily. So from a very young age they treated us as family members, as equals. But of course opinions change from childhood to adulthood. But they treated us as if we had the right to make our own decisions. That said, in 1968, when a lot of people emigrated abroad, my parents were forced to leave too, because the situation was not good and they would be arrested and wouldn’t survive. And I know that my dad got an offer from Argentina to emigrate there. It was all arranged and paid for. He was going to be a journalist there and he was going to take his whole family with him. And my brother and I defiantly stood up against it and we said that we just weren’t emigrating, that we wanted to stay here. And that was a decisive moment for my parents too and we stayed here. So we actually spent those twenty years of cruel totalitarianism at home in the Czech Republic."

„I remember an episode, when dad was locked up in September 89 due to Lidové noviny. That was the last sight of the regime, back then they closed it with Ruda Zeman, who was his representative. And I remember there was a house search a tour house all day. And dad took me aside telling me about all that meant to be in the September Lidové noviny, he even handed over some papers to me. The secret police was more or less coming forced, as they did not want to come and search our home, as they already did that before. Now they put on their white gloves and went through everything, the clothing and all. On top there was my one-year old child Terezka. So we already felt there was something going on. And the dad went to prison and stayed there for a year and half, all through the November 17. I remember we managed to send him the issue of Lidové noviny in an envelope, at the time he was locked up you could read that together, even without Ruml and Zeman it got published. And we sent him that to prison in an envelope and it went straight to him all in one piece! Incredible. Then he wrote us a letter he got Lidovky from us and that was magic, despite all the censorship and searches it went through. We were terribly happy about that.“

“I was running a small errands. I worked in Slezská, my colleagues always made fun of me as I used to put on my hat at lunch break and set off. In Vinohrady I first went to Hejdánky, to the professor Hájek, then to the London street to Petr Uhl and ended up in the Charles square at Vašek Benda distributing fresh new materials of the Chart 77. In an hour I normally returned back to work. Sometimes I got followed by police too, but more or less I stayed aside, they were not after me directly.”

“I know we were returning in about two days from the camp and they let us get oof the car somewhere and I said: ,Well I will walk on foot back home I guess.‘ As nothing worked back then. But I know it was near Staromák, and near there in the Paris street the publishings of the Reporter was located, where my dad worked as the chief editor´s deputy. So I thought I would go there. But there were Russians there occupying it. Dad was not there, as he lived half-illegally in a flat somewhere. So I walked all through Prague to my uncle, who lived in a villa in Vršovice near us, and for a whole week I waited there for my parents as they could not come out. And when the situation calmed down a bit they appeared and actually felt that was the end of their official carrier. And they began to draw back to a kind of a shell of opposition politics and artists. That lasted for about a year, when they still worked as journalists but without any chance to work on anything interesting. So during that year all the authorities were cleared, and all the people we knew, those we liked, our friends were kicked out and completely new era began.“