Josef Zdráhal

* 1951

  • “We smashed the signboard with this huge rock. No one was there as it happened in the evening. And someone, Pavel Majkus I think, filled a light-bulb or some glass container with red paint and he would throw it at the door so it would be covered with this red paint. Everyone understood what we had in mind. We didn´t like the idea of having this Union of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship (SČSP) in our town. Later, comrade prosecutor gave us quite a hard time.”

  • “Planes passing over us woke me at 4AM or at 5AM maybe. We turned on the radio and realised what was going on. My father reminded me: 'See? What did I tell you? They won´t let us go.' We were listening to the radio as back then we didn´t have TV. Then I went out and I saw tanks in the streets. I was in shock. After a few days, the district headquarters of the Soviet Army had been established in Nový Jičín. There were no Hungarian or Polish soldiers, just Russians. And I would go there with Pavel Majkus, trying to explain the situation to officers. They had their own opinion. They talked about counterrevolution and stated that they came to save us. And we were telling them that that wasn´t the point. We haven´t met the regular soldiers as they were camping in tents in the fields and meadows. The Soviets would stay for maybe a month. After that, they had been relocated to barracks in Frenštát.”

  • “We had been planning that we would burn flags, Soviet ones, of course, by self-ignition. And we asked this window dresser to draw us some caricatures of the Soviet Army and the Communist Party Central Committee (ÚV KSČ). He promised us that he would do that and indeed made few of these, but then his father found out and destroyed everything. I can´ t remember exactly what had happened. We wanted to burn the flags on the second anniversary of the occupation. We found this chemist who studied at a college at that time, he agreed and told us that such a thing was possible. We couldn´t proceed with the plan. We wanted to harm the Russians whenever we had a chance.”

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Every form of resistance against totalitarianism is meaningful

Václav Zdráhal in 1969
Václav Zdráhal in 1969
zdroj: Archiv Josefa Zdráhala

Josef Zdráhal was born on April 3rd 1951 in Nový Jičín. From 1966 to 1969, he studied at the local secondary school. In August 1968, he joined protests against the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia. He participated in the acts of resistance till January 1970 with a group of schoolmates and friends. He had been arrested for distributing a leaflet commemorating the self-immolation of Jan Palach and urging the people to resist the curbing of freedoms. The communist court then sentenced him to nine months in jail for sedition. Three more members of the group were sentenced to jail terms. After being released, he had been working at Pramen National Enterprise in Nový Jičín as a warehouseman and a driver´s assistant. After that, he found a job at the District Construction Enterprise in Nový Jičín as a supply manager. In November 1989, he participated in the Velvet Revolution in Nový Jičín, helping to organise a strike committee at the Construction Enterprise. He was a member of a committee screening the former Secret Police (StB) members. From 1990 to 1992, he was a Czechoslovak People‘s Party representative at the Nový Jičín municipal council. He had been rehabilitated under the new regime and awarded the Certificate of Participation in the Third Resistance.