I‘ve carried the Scout oath with me all my life.
Stáhnout obrázek
Jan Špičák was born on 11 November 1933 in Jarošov near Uherské Hradiště. His father Jan Špičák (1903-1970) worked as a brewer in Jarošov in a brewery owned by the Jewish Braun family. In addition to Jan, his mother Božena (1909-2014) had a son Milan in 1938. There were several Jewish families in the vicinity, mostly merchants. On March 15, 1939, the witness witnessed an unwelcome visit by Nazi supporters who preyed on a Jewish woman from the neighborhood in their house. He observed German soldiers in gray-green raincoats and with machine guns occupying Czech territory. By the end of the war, he and his classmates were running from the alarm every day, either to shelter or to observe what was happening outside. In 1947, the family moved to Lanškroun, where the father got a job in the brewery. The teenage Jan joined the Junák there and taking the Scout oath became a crucial experience for him. In 1948, the communists took power in the country and banned the Scout organization by 1950. The drugstore school he joined in 1949 was ruled by a Communist government that made it indiscriminately clear to the children of private citizens that their background was not in line with Communist ideas. When he finished his apprenticeship, he took a part-time job at the Škoda factory. After the war, from 1951-1953, he worked as a salesman in a drugstore and then in Tesla Lanškroun. In 1961 he married and in 1962 and 1964 the couple had two children. In the spring of 1968 he resumed scouting in Lanškroun and became the head of the centre. After two summer camps, however, the ban came again in 1970 and again they had to give away all their property. Two years later they still met in the hiking club, but then it also ended. Twice he became a target of interest for State Security personnel who tried to recruit him into their ranks. Both times he managed to get away. In November 1989, he became involved in the events leading to the fall of the communist system. As a member of the Civic Forum, he called a strike in Lanškroun and in December he resumed the activities of the scout centre. In the first free elections he was elected mayor of the town. In 1994 he attended a meeting with President Václav Havel, where he and other mayors were thanked for their work. In 2024, at the time of the filming, he was still living in Lanškroun.
