Martin Adámek

* 1958

  • “I know that at the end of our Christmas event, when the purpose was to go out with a candle and someone was blowing it out, then you had to light it up again, so there was a final at the Coal Market. There were dozens of children with candles and suddenly cops with beacons came from all sides. They took me to Bartholomew police station and there I had to explain to them what we were doing there, how we were doing it. From the interrogation I just remember clearly that as the game was trivial - just having a candle, not letting it blow out when you blow it out, you gotta light it from someone else - but it seemed to me that the investigator's intelligence was that I he thought that the rules of the game were so simple and he could understand them. If it was something more complicated, I would probably stay there. I thought that we had such a trivial game, and even the cops could understand that it was no anti-state act, but simply a Christmas celebration that the children would meet and play the game around the city. Of course, then the parents, the head of our club, had to be interrogated too, or in fact we functined under physical education unit, so the head of the unity was made responsible.”

  • “Scouts are shaking their left hand around the world. But as I did not ride scouts abroad, I know that we shake our hand in such a special way that we still weave our little fingers. Scouts in other countries apparently do not know that thing; it is a Czech or Czechoslovak specialty that our greeting is a little different. And the left hand salute was the only thing we had in the section, even though the Bolshevik reigned here, we kept and shook our left hand. The other visual things were strictly forbidden. Scarves straight away, then we had other colorful scarves - blue with yellow trim, they lasted only a few years, those were forbidden too. Then we forbade the names of functions, we could no longer be counselors, so we devised rhythm masters, just something similar beginning with 'r'. Gradually, the screws tightened, but the greeting with his left hand was still there, and they did not forbid us.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 10.12.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:04:32
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The Scout salute was the only thing the Bolshevik had taken away from them

Martin Adámek in 1981.
Martin Adámek in 1981.
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Martin Adámek was born on 27 February 1958 in Prague. His father, Čestmír, was a scout and participated in the march of students to Prague Castle in February 1948. The memorial itself entered a Scout-led section in the early 1970s, when Junak was re-dissolved by the Communists. The section thus officially operated under the physical education. Later he became a leader. During a Christmas game in the center of Prague in the 1970s he was summoned to be questioned by the state security. He graduated from high school, after graduating from military service he focused on cooperation with older scouts and alpine tourism. With his wife Hana they raised a daughter and a son. In 2020 he worked as a chairman of the district of Prague 10 in Junák and he is employed as a technician in the State Environmental Fund.