Mgr. Jan Špilar

„When my dad was lecturing about mental hygiene to children in a kindergarten, he described it as a confession. You simply let the child confess. Well and after that he had to go to the regional party committee and they explained none of his children can ever study, only get a training without graduation. My other siblings were already studying, so I was the one considered. In Hradec Králové there was a hairdresser and in Pardubice was a praxis. And in Hořice I think, there was an artistic table maker, so those were the things I was interested in. I was a bit afraid of the wood. But the hair seemed like, ok they´ll grow back... So I chose this kind of profession. I want to say, that it is related to having ideals. I had an ideal of the priest. But at the same time, when I saw a movie about a sailor, so I wanted to be a sailor. Later I was a detective movie, and admitted the police defending justice. I was really thrilled by that. And then I realised, that if I were an actor, I could play all the roles. That I could play a priest and a policeman too, I could actually embody those characters. So I got through a friend to amateur theatre. So I considered that another option, going to conservatory. But as I could not attend any secondary school finished by graduation exam, I got trained as a hairdresser.”

“During interrogation they were actually trying to get you for another reason. But I knew I could not say anything. Every morning my dad used to say at breakfast: ‚Eat properly, so they don’t beat it out of you.‘ One time I was carrying with me, as my friends were advising me to carry a toothbrush and a toothpaste with me, as there you cannot even clean your teeth, in the custody. But they never locked me up. They were asking me about people, who travelled abroad. They were trying to squeeze those people through the small criminal activities and not obeying laws, so that they would tell on others, to get everyone engaged and scared and we would all talk.”