“They came from the central trade union headquarters and offered me an apartment in Prague, saying things like I was young and promising and so on. I got really rude. They left quickly, telling me that I was recalled. I refused to accept this because only the members could recall me under the statutes. But there was no way to convene a meeting because I was not allowed to speak out anywhere. I had just logged 15 years as an employee at Pramet, and the company would give people watches following 15 years with Pramet. The watches were engraved with ‘Commemorating 15 years of work at Pramet Šumperk.’ I was to be handed the watch ceremonially, and I was summoned to a conference. I both was and wasn’t the chair by then, so they invited me, but I was not allowed to speak – just to take the watch. So, I took the watch and walked away.”
“It happened during an air raid just before the end of the war. We walked out of the cellar, I took a look around, and I saw a man sitting on the roof of a multi-storey building with his feet in the eaves and smoking a cigarette. Then I noticed the ropes – his parachute landed on the other side of the roof. He was left there hanging, his feet in the eaves. He was smoking, and I was in shock… He was black. That was the first time I ever saw a black person in my life. It was such a powerful experience, which is why I still remember it in minute detail.”
“I only know so much; we were just little kids. My brother and I would always be in Edisonova Street. Dad had his radio set to receive shortwave broadcasts; I don’t know how he did it because shortwave reception was forbidden and had to be disabled by law. He was friends with Karel Lukas and would inform him about the movements of trains from Olomouc. We lived in Edisonova Street in Pavlovičky and could see the train station, and he used to pass messages about the movements of Nazi transports to England using some sort of a dead drop.”
Lubomír Štencl was born in Olomouc on 18 September 1939. His father Karel was involved in the resistance movement during World War II. Thanks to knowing Karel Lukas, he allegedly passed information on the movements of Nazi forces in Olomouc to England via a dead drop. Despite that, a revolutionary committee confiscated his property in 1945 over his partial German origins. The family relocated to Šumperk after the war, and Lubomír Štencl completed his primary education there. He then obtained a toolmaker training in Přerov and in 1960 he joined the Závod první pětiletky plant (called Pramet from 1966 onwards) in Šumperk. He joined the CPC during the thaw of the 1960s, believing that the system could be reformed. In January 1968, he was elected the chair of the plant trade unions (Revolutionary Trade Unions also known as ROH) and worked towards changing the status quo. He was expelled from the CPC following the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968. He stayed with the firm, however. They needed his skills and expertise, and so he got back to his toolmaker job. He got a job at Tesla Litovel in 1974 and moved to the town with his second wife and her two sons. His stepson Jiří Štencl signed Charter 77 in 1987. As an activist for the Independent Peace Association, he regularly took part in anti-regime protests. As a result, he was detained for 48 hours several times. He was rejected from two high schools and then from his job over his ‘anti-regime’ activities. During the Velvet Revolution, Lubomír Štencl joined the Civic Forum (“OF”) and helped organise protest meetings in Litovel. He was then elected the chair of the company’s trade unions. In 1991, he was elected the Vice-Chair of the Moravia-Silesia Board of the KOVO Trade Unions, and when Czechoslovakia split in two, Lubomír Štencl was elected the Vice-Cair of the KOVO Trade Unions in April 1993. He stayed in the position until 2000. At the time of recording in 2023, he was living in his cottage in Bartoňov.
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