Luboš Holoubek

* 1928

  • “I collaborated with priest Josef Uhlíř. He was very active and the policemen were constantly monitoring him. He would for instance go to lead spiritual exercises in Slovakia. He sent me a message that he would need me to come over and keep an eye on the presbytery the following Friday. His housekeeper was an honest woman. If somebody came and asked where the priest was, she would tell them, even the StB agents, then the priest had left for Slovakia. She was very diligent. She was taking care of the priest, but she was admonishing him that he must not lie. He told her: ‘Remember, this is not lying. In this situation, you need to understand that we have a great enemy, and you must not tell to anyone.’ He could not rely on her at all, because those guys were smart. He therefore sent me a postcard and invited me to come over on Thursday or Friday. I knew that he was going to Slovakia for four or five says. In order to prevent something like this happening, I would be going to open the door instead of her if somebody came. They were watching his car. He was going shopping to Lomnice nad Popelkou, and as he was coming out of the shop, he saw somebody staring into his car. It was a policeman.”

  • “The reason it happened was that the relatives told my mom that a tailor’s profession was nothing special. There are three army barracks in the town, and they told her she should have dated an officer instead. That she would have had a better life with some officer. My mom considered this better, and she therefore left my dad. She placed my brother in an orphanage and I stayed at home and I was being brought up by a new mom: I am thankful to her, although it was quite tough for me, because I had stepbrothers and, as it usually happens, this did have an impact on me. Mom was strict, too, but as a little boy I had to admit that she took care of me in every way. When I was later moving out of Jičín, I looked for her. She didn’t expect that I, a stepchild, would come to see her. But I went to her to thank her that she had taken care of me and for everything that she had done for me. She was happy, because she didn’t expect it.”

  • “When we went there for the first time, people were confused. They asked us whether they ought to go to work to the Žďas factory or not. I was immediately summoned to the Žďas headquarters and they told me that people should come to work. Moms were calling us and asking whether nurseries and kindergartens would be functioning. People were calling and asking about the situation in the hospital. We called the director of the hospital and he told us that they were preparing a meeting and that they would be on duty and dealing with the situation twenty-four hours a day, including the nights. The same with deliveries. We called the bakery, because there was nothing left in shops, as it usually happens in situations like this. We thus called the bakery manager and he said that he knew about it, and that they would continue baking bread all the time, even at night, so that deliveries of bread cold be ensured, and he asked me to relay this information to people so that they would stop hoarding bread.”

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    Žďár nad Sázavou, 04.11.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 03:45:23
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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Above all we had to calm the people down in order to prevent bloodshed

Luboš Holoubek
Luboš Holoubek
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

  Luboš Holoubek was born February 24, 1928 in Jičín. From 1948 he worked as a reporter for the Czechoslovak Radio - at first in Prague, then in Jihlava, and subsequently in Žďár nad Sázavou. Together with his wife Irena they were broadcasting from there even in August 1968 when Czechoslovakia became invaded by the armies of five Warsaw Pact countries. For ten days and nights they were keeping the public informed, sending messages to the invaders and urging the people to stay calm. Their radio station eventually became one of the last ones in the entire country to keep reporting. Both Luboš and his wife were then immediately fired for this activity. Luboš Holoubek then changed jobs several times, and he eventually retired earlier due to an eye problem. He used his experience as a radio reporter for recording the life stories of Catholic nuns and other representatives of the Church. During the 1970s and 1980s he recorded tens of interviews with them and he also supported the Church by his other activities. He and his wife now live in Žďár nad Sázavou.