"We already knew Havel by sight and my brother didn't. We came to Hrádeček and we talked with Havel until the morning. My brother was impressed with Havel, he said, 'Mate, that's a great man, we don't even have that in America.' Do you think he's going to be president?' I said, 'Well, they say it's just ready here, that he could be president.' 'I wish you would, a president like that.' Well, it was from the sixteenth to the seventeenth of November [1989]. And we didn't sleep until the morning, maybe we took a little nap afterwards. And Havel says, 'If you go early, take some leaflets, because there's going to be a demonstration on Albertov.' We all knew that, we all knew that there was going to be a demonstration in Albert Square, there were a lot of demonstrations and we were going through those demonstrations, running away from the water cannons. It was already clear that it was going to break somehow. Nobody knew how, nobody knew when. But it was clear that it was tense. Various people were also arrested from dissent. Well, he gave us a bunch of papers to take with us, so we went and nobody stopped us. That was kind of strange, because it was always the case that there was lustration, because there was this little booth in front of the entrance to his property. Nobody stopped us, I just saw that we were registered, so we drove through. We handed in the leaflets or whatever it was, and suddenly it turned out to be the first step towards a turnaround. Nobody knew, it was just a demonstration planned, one of many, but this one was already clear with the students getting on there and the workers joining in as well."
"Of course, there were people who were diagnosed by selected specialists and they had them locked up in a psychiatric ward until they went black. But, as it happens, others, and we did this with great gusto and it was necessary... we helped people by having them locked up, we admitted them to psychiatric care, and in that way we kept them safe from secret police, from the cops, and we enabled them to get a blue book [exemption from the military service], incapacity for work, but also a disability pension. So these people were actually protected by what was supposed to be... Some were disabled and were at the mercy of the system, but others, and I dare say there were more, actually got a lot of things out of the system. I think I have helped maybe a few dozen people to a blue book in my time. That I helped many people to hide."
"We went to England thinking we would travel, which we did. A couple of days after we arrived, it was in Exeter, we went shopping in the morning. Nobody was on the street there yet, the English people were getting up later than we were then, they were used to it. And a man pulled up, he had a Hillman car, I remember that. And the guy got out and said, 'Well, your freedom is over.' He said it in Czech, slammed the door and drove off. We knew, of course, that there was a possibility that the Russians would take over the Czech Republic, but we didn't believe that naively, we still... we're smarter now. So we bought a newspaper and on the front page was Wenceslas Square and there were tanks. We bought the Times and the Guardian and on both pages there was a similar picture of the same motif. We didn't know what to do next and we thought we had to go to London and we had to go to the Czech Embassy because that seemed to be the only sensible thing to do. And then that's when the time we were in England started. The English were gerat, generous. They offered us accommodation, there was also an office that dealt with this, with Czechoslovak refugees. And when they found out that we were university students, they offered us the opportunity to study."
"It was an old Gothic church, as I said, but it had a 73-metre high tower, and the tower was cracked. By some subsidence. It was just off the road that connected Bratislava or Břeclav with Brno, it was a Brno road, there were quite a lot of cars going there. And the Bolsheviks deliberately didn't fix the tower, even though they should have. Even though they had clear instructions that there would be some great damage, and there was. The tower fell apart over one Sunday morning and fell so unfortunately that it landed on the older part of the church, demolished it, and the Bolsheviks did the thing of blasting the rest of it, which was the nave and the chancel. And they also blew up the one next to it, which was an added chapel that was part of the church. So the church was destroyed like that. And I was then... That was such an event that my mother came running up to me and said, 'George, your tower fell down' because they associated me with that. You could see how scared she was, how unhappy she was. So I ran out of the house and what was always on the horizon wasn't there. That was such a trauma that my world view changed completely. And it was the beginning of my conviction that the communists were pretty bad bastards."
Jiří Růžička was born on 2 December 1943 in Hustopeče into a large extended family. He himself had four siblings, but the family also consisted of numerous relatives and close neighbourly relations. His parents were artistically gifted and devoted themselves to restoration work. He liked the multicultural environment in the town, which was also due to his contacts with Vienna, where some of his relatives had gone before the war. However, with the communist takeover, the atmosphere in the town changed completely, ties were broken and people of poor character got the upper hand. Little Jiří grew up in the Catholic faith and was an enthusiastic altar boy. But this was not a good basis for further life, nor was the fact that his father‘s small business had been confiscated or that some relatives were living abroad in the West. After graduating from a secondary technical school, however, he managed to get into the philosophy faculty despite various difficulties. Here he chose the field of psychology, which directed his life path. August 1968 found him on a holiday tour of England, where he was offered the chance to continue his studies. However, the academic approach there did not suit him and he returned to Czechoslovakia, where he completed his studies. As a psychologist with a reputation of maladjusted person, he changed many jobs, but working with psychiatric patients brought him great fulfilment. Through his practice and his friendships, he was in close contact with dissent, organizing and attending housing seminars. He was also involved in work with children, where he worked to improve access in state institutions. In 1984 he was behind the establishment of the Nad Ondřejovem day care centre in Hodkovičky, where he worked for 10 years. A major milestone was meeting the psychiatrist Jaroslav Skála in the 1970s, with whom he has since collaborated on a number of projects. Immediately after the Velvet Revolution, they founded the Prague Psychotherapy Faculty, which, after receiving accreditation in 2001, became the Prague University of Psychosocial Studies. Jiří Růžička still teaches here and is its rector. After the Velvet Revolution he was active in many other areas. He worked for the professional anchoring of clinical psychology and psychotherapy and was behind the establishment of several professional organizations. At the same time, he never stopped working with patients. In 1994, he co-founded the ESET Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Clinic, where he still serves as director. At the time of recording (2022) 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!
