"When I finished my postgraduate studies in 1975, he came to me in 1976, he used to work for us, he spoke several languages, I had learned from him, he was the head of the library, he was a lawyer, I learned German from him. He came to see me several times. Then I found out that he would come every month and talk to the director and so on. They weren't officially listed as State Security agents, but they were basically giving reports to State Security. And he says to me, 'Hey, what were you been doing? Why did you stay up until 3 a.m.? Where did you go?' So first he wanted to scare me, to make me afraid. And he said to me: 'Look, Jirka, we'll let you go, you were doing well, you'll continue your studies. Choose if you want, Australia, America, England, whatever you want. But there´s only one condition. You'll work for Czech counter-intelligence.' I said, 'Well, don't get angry, I won't.' He came to see me about three times and I can tell you that I was really scared, I didn't sleep at night because I wondered what they would do to me if I refused to cooperate with the counter-intelligence. And I was aware that my dad had done the same thing under much worse circumstances."
"She sent my application to Kralupy to an eleven-year secondary school. And instead of my parents, she wrote there my aunt and uncle. And they accepted me into the 11-year-old secondary school without taking the entrance exam. I went home for the holidays, of course. I confess that I often cried, when a thirteen year old boy [loses his mum], even though my aunt was really nice. And there, the chairman of the Communists, a certain Honza Bučina, who taught us history at primary school. He was a carpenter, but he completed a year's course, and after the year's course he taught us history. But he was still the chairman of the Communist Party and the vice-headteacher of the school. I don't know how they found out, they wrote to Kralupy, how they could admit such an enemy to secondary school. I still remember that on August 21, but ten years earlier, 1958, we got a letter that I was expelled from that secondary school. But I wasn´t attending it yet. That was a rarity, I was expelled from a school I had not yet attended. And they told me I could either become a miner, a metallurgist, or go into the chemical industry."
"Daddy was arrested in 1955 and sentenced to 10 years. And we hoped he would come back on amnesty in 1960. And unfortunately, his friend who he was sitting in the cell with came to us and said, 'I'm so sorry, but your daddy wasn't released.' And then when he came back, he explained why. Because he had been visited in prison by, he's from Horní Bolíkov, a village near Studená, a classmate of his from primary school who worked as a State Security agent, and he says to him, 'Look, you have a wife in hospital, you have three children at home. If you sign collaboration with State Security you will go home. And my dad says to him, 'Honza, you were a thug at primary school and you're still a thug. Of course I won't sign anything. And he said to him: 'Then, Pepík, you'll do all the time. Fortunately, in 1962, another amnesty came and Daddy came back."
Jiří Vaníček was born on 26 February 1944 in Počátky into the family of a headteacher. His father was sentenced in 1955 in a mock trial to ten years imprisonment for treason. In 1957, when he was 13 years old, his mother‘s health deteriorated and he had to leave home to live with her sister in Nelahozeves. Because he was the son of a political prisoner and therefore an enemy of the state, he was forbidden to study at secondary school. He trained as a chemist at the Silon company in Planá nad Lužnicí. In the 1960s he was allowed to study at the Faculty of Science in Brno because there was a shortage of technical intellectuals in the country. In 1968 he signed the manifest Two Thousand Words. In 1969 he married Eva Nováková, and together they raised two daughters. In 1976 he was offered the opportunity to work and study abroad, with the condition of cooperating with Czechoslovak intelligence, which he refused. Despite his poor cadre profile as the son of a political prisoner, he became a world-renowned scientist. After 1989, he became mayor of Tábor for two terms. In 2022, he was living in Tábor.
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!
