"I had no idea it would be such a big event even a demonstration. It was supposed to be a normal pilgrimage. But significant because of the anniversary. And the communists tried to take advantage of that with banners saying: 'Welcome to the peace pilgrimage.' And when the chairman of the district national committee started his speech with that sentence, it started a riot. Everything else they said was already wrong. They tried to exploit it, but it was already out of their hands. It was only the then Bishop Vrána who managed to calm the crowd down within a few sentences. Although he calmed it down, the tension was such that when I listened to Klusák's speech, it was actually quite reasonable for those times. He could probably sign it now, but the tension was such that whatever Klusák [Minister Milan Klusák] said, it exploded. The Slovak Minister of Culture Válek [Miroslav Válek] preferred to say nothing more and cut his speech short. My wife said at home: 'I'm not going, we have five children, who knows what will happen there, and someone has to take care of them.' I went there. Sometimes you take that step even when you're afraid."
"It was strange at that time, in 1969. It was still believed then that everything would not be so bad. I'm talking about my own feelings, but it all had such a strange feel to it. At that time in Vietnam, several people were burned to death in protest. And my first impression was: This can't be possible! That can't happen in this civilization! All kinds of things happen, but for a young boy [Jan Palach] to burn himself to death in protest, one didn't want to believe it at all. At least not to me. It wasn't until Jaroslav Seifert came out with the calls 'don't burn yourself, don't do it, you are needed alive' that it dawned on people. And it did for the next twenty years, when it [the self-immolation of Jan Palach] made our whole generation, who lived through it as twenty-year-olds, feel bad. That he [Jan Palach] did something like that, and yet we behaved in a way that didn't help. It didn't rouse us."
"My father also said that they had it much better in prison than those in the concentration camp. But it also happened that a guard beat a prisoner with his keys. Somehow he didn't like him, so he hit him several times with a bunch of keys until he killed him. In general, at our home it was very little talked about."
Čeněk Zapletal was born on August 1, 1946 in Uherské Hradiště, where he spent almost his entire life, except for his university studies at Masaryk University in Brno. He was greatly influenced by the resistance activities of his father Vincenc and uncle Bohuslav. Although he was not yet born, throughout his life he reflected on the meaning of the sacrifice of the second and third resistance. His father Vincenc Zapletal was sentenced to eight years in prison for preparing treason. His uncle Bohumil Zapletal was sentenced to death and executed by the Nazis in Breslau on May 6, 1943. Both of them participated in the anti-Nazi resistance group Obrana Národa (Defence of the Nation) in Uherské Hradiště, where they got thanks to the Orel unit. As a post-war child, the witness was often ill and at the age of five he contracted whooping cough. Čeněk Zapletal lived through the relatively free sixties at university, but at the same time he intensely perceived the changes after August 1968 and the events surrounding the self-immolation of Jan Palach. In 1985 he participated in the important Národní pouť na Velehrad (National Pilgrimage to Velehrad), which became one of the largest anti-communist demonstrations. He devoted his entire professional life to teaching, mostly at the secondary school in Otrokovice. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 he became the headmaster there. In 2001, he co-founded a Church grammar school in Velehrad. He is the father of five children and lived with his wife in Uherské Hradiště at the time of the recording.
Father's painting company before 1948 in the church in Staré Město u Uherského Hradiště. Father of Čeněk Zapletal - Vincenc Zapletal second from the left. Grandfather in the middle
Father's painting company before 1948 in the church in Staré Město u Uherského Hradiště. Father of Čeněk Zapletal - Vincenc Zapletal second from the left. Grandfather in the middle
On the right, father Vincenc Zapletal during the military service in Slovakia in the Tatra Mountains in 1929. Here he gained his best condition, which later helped him to survive the Nazi imprisonment from 1940 to 1945.
On the right, father Vincenc Zapletal during the military service in Slovakia in the Tatra Mountains in 1929. Here he gained his best condition, which later helped him to survive the Nazi imprisonment from 1940 to 1945.
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