Bohuslav Kraus

* 1955

  • "Then we went to the square in the evening and Milan Kňažko climbed up, I stood down under the tribune. Those of us who were well grown, we were careful not to get drunk up there and do something there. Then he started reading the statement I had signed the day before. It's interesting how the human brain works. That's when I realized that now it's really, that it's not a game. I knew what the names would be at the end of that statement. And then I said to myself, 'Come on, we have to go all the way. To the end and hardly. ‘It was weird, I still remember it, and I admit it. The struggle and activities of the dissent were such that they were in a certain closed circle of people who held the person, but on the other hand it did not spread further. Maybe his family could be affected, it wasn't the 50s like my grandfather, grandmother and the whole family paid for the political trials. That's when I realized it was public, that it was really serious. That this is no longer a demonstration that they can disperse, because we have already signed up for it and more and more people have signed up. It was a strong moment, a very strong moment when those points sounded, those anti-communist points were quite hard, among other things. "

  • "I don't know exactly, I think it was '86. It was like that, at that time I was working at Dopravoprojekt as a relatively successful architect. Suddenly, Jano Budaj calls me that they found Tomáš dead and that it isn't known if he was murdered. It was a hot summer, they found him dead at a sublease in Dolné Hony. Tomáš had no longer a mother, a father, or any relatives, and they did not allow Ján Budaj to identify him, that he could no longer be identified. Apparently his corpse had been lying there for three weeks and also looked like this. At least, Ján was allowed to organize a funeral. He called me: 'Unfortunately, I know that you are an architect in Dopravoprojekt, but Tomáš was our friend. It's up to you to decide if you want to take part, I don't have to explain to you who will be there, ‘with such a smile. I'm saying ok, so I went to the funeral. I came to the funeral, there were a maximum of thirty of us, ten of them from Prague, the rest we were from Bratislava and then, there were about 150 police officers. In coats, pretending to be survivors, and cameras installed everywhere that filmed the entire funeral. Jano had his last speech before the coffin was launched. He said that he had to leave, so he left before that speech. Then he came back and said, 'I had to have him checked by the bastard standing in the back. I also had to have the music checked and then I only had to read what I had written. Because they said they would take us all right away, and I don't want to blame you. I didn't want innocent people to pay for it. ‘So he read it, the last song was, “Born to be wild by Steppenwolf”, then I couldn't listen to it for years. And we buried Tomáš, or what was left of him.”

  • "I was thirteen. There were several special events, but one of the most important - I remember, that the day before we watched TV in Zvolen, I was there on vacation. Grandma walked around, my grandfather and I watched, and she said, 'I'm telling you, the Russians won't leave this like that.' And my grandfather and I said no, that we finally have normal socialism. And at four or five in the morning, my grandmother woke me up with the words: 'I told you, the Russians are here, it's war!' And they drove us out, we went to buy flour, sugar, salt, etc. I missed them, thirteen years, puberty. I went to the square in Zvolen, the first transporters came, they were not there yet, the first ones came from Detva. As hippies, long-haired people, even thirteen-year-olds, we lay down or sat down on the road so that they would not survive. So they passed. They passed, started firing, so we ran away. Then I went home to have lunch, but I was well-behaved, and I bragged about the experience of being shot at us. So I was locked on the first floor of a family house so I couldn't run away for the second time. It was such an intense experience. Because I've experienced what it's like to sit when they go against armored personnel carriers, then tanks, and suddenly the shooting starts and everyone runs four-legged to the first bushes. I had a very intense experience from that. We still talked about politics in our country, so I already knew a lot about politics when I was thirteen. Our family talked about it in one piece. Even in Bratislava, my mother had very good friends of architects, artists and musicians. Meetings were held at our home, which my sister and I were always a part of. I listened and I had an idea. I even got the impression that I shook hands somewhere in the square in sixty-eighth with Dubček as a little boy-teenager.

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Bratislava, 16.02.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 02:27:26
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

„We, from the art underground, were essentially anti-communists.“

Bohuslav Kraus comes from a Czechoslovak family from Zvolen, where he was born on February 26, 1955. After 1948, his grandparents on the paternal side, who came from Moravia, nationalized the bookstore. In 1958, they were convicted on fabricated accusation and subsequently imprisoned. Their arrest and the visit of his grandfather to the Ilava prison affected the memorial‘s attitude towards the communist regime for the rest of his life. When Bohuslav was ten years old, he moved with his mother to Bratislava. He spent the summer holidays in 1968 with his grandparents in Zvolen, where on August 21, he and his friends tried unsuccessfully to stop Soviet tanks in the city by sitting in front of them. In 1970 he began attending a mathematical grammar school. He belonged to a group of „hippies“ with long hair and was expelled from school after the second year due to disputes with the deputy director and a negative attitude towards SZM. He was accepted to the School of Arts and Crafts (ŠUP-ku), where there was a relatively free and creative atmosphere that shaped him. From 1974 he was a member of the art and poetry group Degenerated Generation, later renamed the Temporary Society of Intense Survival, which organized art exhibitions and various events of conceptual art. In 1976, he began studying at the Faculty of Architecture in Bratislava, continued to work in underground art groups and participated in the publication of prohibited literature. After completing one year of compulsory military service, he worked for Dopravoprojekt. He participated in the meeting of the so-called secret church and worked with his longtime friend Ján Budaj in Bratislava/ aloud. In the revolutionary days after November 17, 1989, he was a member of the senior management of VPN, actively contributed to the dissolution of the paid Association of Architects of Slovakia and was a co-founder of the Association of Architects of Slovakia. He also actively participated in the exchange of academic officials at the Faculty of Architecture. He was one of the VPN candidates for the first free elections in June 1990, but was withdrawn from it after the forced resignation of Ján Budaj shortly before the elections. He left politics and VPN definitely after the assembly in Košice in April 1991 and subsequently devoted himself fully to architecture.