"There was a large group which became a platoon. The leader was Jiří Lédr. But we didn't know it was a platoon. We followed strict rules of cospiracy. We were in contact with three or four people only. You are in an organisation which is getting ready for armed resistance and which is doing some intelligence work at the same time. We got into contact with each other and each one knew just three or four other members."
"There was a meeting of Czech National Council in that house. We were guarding the meeting – we were standing on the staircase, thirty or fifty meters from each other on Národní Street. - "Were you armed?" - "Yes, not everybody, but those on the staircase had guns. I didn't have a gun but we had instructions what to do. We were watching the police and German forces and reported about their movement. We guarded that meeting."
"When we graduated from secondary school, we all received an invitation to get a medical check on Slezská street. It was also a place of headquarters of Technische Nothilfe. We arrived and they closed the gate. Then we went to the check in and were told they would provide us with telephones, ´You will call your parents and you will ask them to bring you the following things. You have been made members of Technische Nothilfe.´- “So they didn't want you to leave the place?“ - "No, they were afraid we would escape. So their plan was very clever – it should have been just a medical check, which was really there, but they gathered us this way."
"It was natural that after the older generation a new one had to come. We did not talk about it like that, but it was clear. It was a generational change. We thought we had to contribute to it all. In fact we replaced the killed ones and we felt that it was necessary. It was also because of the age – seventeen, sixteen. It was romantic, of course, but the romanticism was motivated by patriotism. I am not ashamed of it – it was just a natural part of what was inside of us. We did not like anything German as we were better and better informed about it and finally we started to hate it. Unfortunately, a war is an eruption of the evil and the evil creates what hatred represents. It is just natural."
Pavel Tučný was born in Prague on 28 April 1925. Although his father came from a poor family in Valašsko, he studied law in Vienna. His son Pavel loves Valašsko. After the WWI his father moved to Prague, where he got married and had two sons. Pavel Tučný was a member of the Scouts and also Sokol, which was a national physical-education organization. He went to grammar school on Křemencova Street. After the outbreak of WWII, several resistance cells came into being at his school. He became involved in illegal activities with his friends from Sokol and a scouting group in Letná. It was after the assassination of Heydrich when many older resistance workers were arrested and younger people were taking over their work. Pavel Tučný became a member of Zpravodajská brigáda (Intelligence Brigade). Because of Totaleinsatz (German: total deployment - forced labour) he worked for Luftschutz and his task was to give information about the material ships brought to the port in Prague, Holešovice. He was also illegally trained. He was very active, sometimes he made more than one message a day. He also graduated from his secondary grammar school in 1944. As the end of the war was approaching, the activities of the Intelligence Brigade started to concentrate on the preparation of an armed uprising. Pavel was an active participant of the fights in the Prague uprising from 5 May 1945. First, he fought near the Masaryk´s Railway Station and then in Zlíchov. After the war ended, he helped to calm the situation down and then started to study Czech language at Charles University. After graduation, he worked as a teacher at a grammar school and Czech Economic University, where he was dismissed at the end of 1950s. Nowadays, Pavel Tučný and other members of the Intelligence Brigade are preparing a book about not so well-known people of resistance movement.
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!
