Vladimír Veselý

* 1954

  • "Charter 77 came in and we came to the afternoon shift and they had some of these secretaries and assistants and I don't know what all to sign that we didn't agree with the Charter. And we in the shift said, 'Well, we'll sign it, but first let us read it so we know what we're against and what to do with it.' 'Well, we won't.' 'Well, we won't sign anything.' Well, okay, nothing happened. Nothing happened for about a month and then the foreman came and said: 'Well, you've made a lot of money, so Veselý, Matějíček, Bužga will go to Moravské kovárny Zastávka u Brna for a year as part of the assistance.'"

  • "Breznev came to visit and they [Gustav Husák] kissed, that's well known. And of course we as soldiers had to go to that weekly meeting. Now imagine, there was a big cinema hall, there were about four hundred of us. It was somehow in the afternoon. In the army, duty starts at 4 o'clock and we went on duty, so you have a gun, but no bullets, they didn't give us that. Now they put on the weekly news for us and the lights were off in the hall, and now various officers were there. And now they [Brezhnev and Husak] had that kiss and somebody said in that hall: 'Kiss his ass too, dude.' He had it stopped, and now, 'Who was that?' And now the interesting reaction of those guys, without talking, we had these rifles, machine guns, but we didn't have bullets, but they didn't know, or they didn't know if we had bullets. And we all... that were the stoppers clicking. We just sat there. 'All right, go on.'"

  • "That's one of the tumbles that moved me somewhere else among the addicts. I have a lot of friends who are addicts and alcoholics, and we hang out in different ways. We have these Alcoholics Anonymous clubs together. It's a wonderful thing, you see the other side of it again. So it's a roller coaster ride, of course, with the divorce and everything, but that's where I started to learn about myself, to be able to understand and forgive myself. Now my ex-wife and I are getting along very well. At first, of course, she didn't trust, an alcoholic, how can you trust? What about a drunk guy? So again you get to know yourself from another side, it's a good thing, but I don't recommend going that way, I don't recommend it."

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    Jihlava, 16.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:31:34
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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We said we‘d sign it, but let them read us the charter first.

Vladimír Veselý in his youth
Vladimír Veselý in his youth
zdroj: archive of a witness

Vladimír Veselý was born on 17 November 1954 in Jihlava. He grew up with relatives in Líšná near Nové Město na Moravě. At the age of seven he moved to Jihlava to join his parents, where he subsequently graduated from an industrial school. In the 1960s he joined a scout troop in Jihlava, then experienced the third ban of Junák and the forced liquidation of the camp in 1971. After his military service, he married and started working in the Jihlava Motorpal company. From the 1980s he worked for the firefighters. After the Velvet Revolution, he was at the birth of the Jihlava Secondary Vocational School of Social Work, and since 1993 he worked there as a schoolmaster. In 2003 he underwent anti-alcohol treatment. Since then, he has been leading Alcoholics Anonymous clubs and helping people affected by addictions.