PaedDr. František Vízek

"Every time there was an anniversary, for example 21 August, 9 May or 1 May, they would phone the quarry and ask if Comrade Vízek was at work. One time, someone was there to see if it was true that I was working manually. Someone must have been tricked, because it was under the pretext that he wanted to make a monument, and then it came to nothing. But the interesting thing was that he wanted to go through the quarry and he wanted to see me. He was certainly surprised at the way I walked. It was cold at that time, I had what they call cam shoes, ear muffs, steel-toed boots. I was a terrible sight to look at, so he believed that I was really working manually. And as I was living in Budovatelů Street, I learned afterwards that there was a studio apartment opposite my apartment, which served as a conspiracy apartment. And there was a person living in our apartment building who was giving information about me."

"We, as delegates to the Vysočany Congress, were isolated, we got into the Vysočany factory because we didn't know what would happen to us. We wanted the workers of the CKD to cover for us. We didn't know if the army would arrest us all, if we would be taken somewhere, if there would be some repression. That's why we didn't go around Prague, we were in the area of the Vysočany factory. Among the workers who were as shocked as we were."

"On August 21, we arrived with my wife and children from Moravia. That was very hard for us because we had nothing at home, not even a little milk, a roll, nothing at all. In the morning, when I turned on the radio, I heard what was happening. I thought it was some kind of radio play. It was a shock to me. Unfortunately, I left my wife at home with the two kids. Fortunately, my parents lived next door, so they were able to take care of my wife and the two children. I went to the secretariat and prepared myself for the role I had, which was to carry out the duties of an elected delegate to the convention. Dad was crying by the radio at the time, what happened was a huge shock to him. Although he loved the Soviet Union and trusted the Communist Party, something like that was a huge shock to him as well. I wasn't home for several days."

"I'll be honest - I was quite proud of it. I was quite happy to join the party at the time because it seemed to me that the party was changing quite a bit. Stalin had been denounced and removed from the mausoleum, Klement Gottwald had been removed from Vitkov hill, political prisoners were being rehabilitated. Suddenly I saw that the Party had reflected on itself and had begun to criticise its practices. I found it fantastic that the party that had everything under its thumb began to doubt itself and began to self-criticise. I was very impressed by that as an 18-year-old boy, and I thought that the party had come to its senses. In the sixties I understood that it had not got its wits about it. This was also shown in 1968."

"At that time, I was elected a delegate to the Vysočany Congress. You may remember that when in August, when the army came here on August 21, a congress was held in Vysočany, Prague, on August 23. I was elected a delegate for culture and education there. Of the six, I suspect there were six of us, I was the youngest. It seems to me that for this reason I am probably the last living of our delegates to the congress of Jablonec. We got to Vysočany by car, inscriptions everywhere, left, right. ´Go right back home! ’, Lenin, wake up, Brezhnev went mad,” and such various slogans. We didn't know what would happen to us. We didn't know what would happen. If the congress delegates don't disperse us, if they don't arrest us, if we don't lose our lives in the end. But the whole nation, both Slovak and Czech, basically arose and the Soviets failed to provoke such an action anywhere that they could prove to the world that there really was a counter-revolution."

"And because I, as a teacher, didn't want to sign the agreement that the invasion was necessary and that it was in fact helping us, I just had to leave. First from Jablonec nad Nisou, I was not allowed to teach here. I was the deputy director in Pivovarská, I was not allowed to maintain the function, I was not allowed to be a class teacher, I had to teach in Lučany. I stayed there for a while. In the end, I was not even allowed to be a lecturer at the so-called socialist academy, it was said at the time. And in the end I had to go to the quarry, because someone had to feed the family. I already had four children, and my wife could not work. And then the time was interesting in that the working class, it was said, had a leading role in society. That is, they made me a worker, that is, I became a member of the ruling working class, as it was said at the time, which was, of course, stupid, no worker thought he was running this society."

"I moved from the quarry to education. So it happened that the teachers in the Jablonec region wrote a petition, noticed that the teacher was working manually in a nearby quarry, and came to the conclusion that I should return. And that petition influenced my return. I did not return to the class, but I became something we today call the director of the school office. I had the job for six years, until 1996. It was not an easy time, because many school principals had to quit, there were bankruptcies and competitions in schools. According to the lustration law at the time, everyone had to bring a confirmation and an affidavit that they were not agents or collaborators of the State Security. The one who did not bring it could not be the principal of the school, or the kindergarten, or even primary or secondary school. Let’s compare this to what is in the highest position today, Prime Minister. As the director of the school office, I had to stop the work of many excellent school principals only because, out of fear or lack of courage, they did not say what they thought and agreed to the entry of troops, they eventually became collaborators of the State Security. Maybe they didn't hurt anyone, but they couldn't bring a lustration certificate, and by law I had to remove them from office, they couldn't make a school principal. So, I sometimes hurt good people, teachers, excellent school principals, and regret that. But that revolutionary era sometimes required such revolutionary interventions."

"When [Jan Palach] had a funeral, it was something very sad. There were tears in everyone's eyes. And that's why I was very sorry about how quickly everything was forgotten. As in 1969, it was no longer the Soviet army, but the Czech police, the Czech People's Militia, the Czech army unfortunately behaved towards people who, a year after the August invasion, tried to express their disapproval of the stay of foreign troops in our territory, I was sorry about that. How many people, Czechs and Slovaks, simply adapted. How we, who were badly engaged, who were fired from our jobs, persecuted in all sorts of ways, and who became second-class citizens, so to speak, as few people were just interested. I was sorry."