Miloš Chaloupka

* 1946

  • “We were not in any way persecuted until the monetary reform, June 1, 1953. My grandfather, František Holub, born 1892, walked through the square and the communist comrades started arresting people. My grandfather was arrested and this only confirmed that we were on the other side, we didn’t like the comrades any longer since they did this to us. They put my grandfather in prison and broke his leg in a car. They wanted to move my grandmother to North Moravia, near the Polish border. My mother had worked with a solicitor so she used some of her experience, went to the district attorney in Prague and she managed to save my grandmother from being moved far. She was moved from her flat in Marxova 30, where she lived with my grandfather on the second floor, to Železniční street 42, the first floor, two rooms, no toilet, no bathroom, nothing.”

  • “I did not join the Pioneer organization, I somehow avoided it, I didn’t have to… When I was leaving school, I did not wear the Pioneer scarf. It is documented. I had a grey suit and a tie. The others had to wear the Pioneer scarf. I was against it and I didn’t want to do something that the comrades ordered me to do. On the other hand, we were not persecuted. Well, my parents were persecuted for not flying Soviet flags on May 1 and 9. My mother had to stand before the civil committee and explain.”

  • “It was very tense, we didn’t know whether fights would break or not. And we were there virtually all the time, groups of people even stayed there overnight. I lived in Marxova street, just off the place, so I was at home. There were various slogans, hanging in the park. There was a tank at the place of today’s Klostermnnka, just opposite the radio. We took some soil and plugged its cannon. The soldier got really angry and started spinning the cannon round, this was quite dangerous. We were all on the ground, but he didn’t fire. It was calm, they were not given an order to do anything. They just drove us away from the tank and similar things. And we did provocations like this.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Plzeň, 19.03.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:29
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu In the footsteps of the 1953 Pilsen Uprising and Alan's war
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I did not want what comrades ordered me to do

Chaloupka Miloš
Chaloupka Miloš
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Miloš Chaloupka was born on July 5, 1946, in Pilsen. As a child he suffered from pneumonia, serious meningitis, asthma and hay fever, which he suffers from still today. His parents  pampered their only son and, in order that he had enough of damp air, they bought a cottage with a plot of land over the river in Litice near Pilsen. He cycled there every day with his grandfather and father. He was interested in music since his youth and started playing piano and organ. During the unrest after the monetary reform, on Monday, June 1, 1953, he and his mother walked through the city and watched the disturbed crowds. On that day, his mother’s father, František Holub, did not return from work. He was arrested on the way home, thrown on a wagon where he broke his leg. He was subsequently arrested and he served fifteen months in the Pankrác prison. Miloš Chaloupka graduated of the primary school and apprenticed as a mechanician of office machinery. On completing his training, he worked in Kancelářské stroje Plzeň [Office Machinery Pilsen] for the next twenty-eight years. He extended his education by evening study of Technical School, of which he graduated in 1970. During the 1968 occupation he took part in the demonstration at the radio building, the Mír Square. In the mid 1970s he married and the pair had a daughter in 1976. Miloš Chaloupka took part in the demonstrations for the fall of the communist regime but today he is disappointed from the course the events took after 1989. In 1992 he left his company and took up several other jobs. In 1998, he became the production manager of the Pilsen Philharmonics. He enjoyed the work, which he found fulfilling, and left it only on retirement in 2012. Even today, his diary is full and he has to refuse work. He plays piano and organ both solo and in three ensembles. He takes care of his garden and looks forward to another harvest of his favourite tomatoes.