Anton Bartunek

* 1945

  • And, so, I did not actually sign it and I have already started flirting with the fact that I will leave Opava. And one time,I was with my parents over the holidays in Lipany. At that time, the son was already several months old. I know that then we were in the Tatras for about three days, with my wife. And we handled Terry's cottage, Rysy with a wife, and that was in the 69th year. Rysy and Hincovo mountain lake. These tours were the most beautiful which I completed in the Tatras at that time. And I went to the pharmacy in Lipany, because I needed to buy a sunar for my son, and there was a pharmacist Jurecký who worked there. Who? The pharmacist was calling Jurecký and he was a Jew. A long time ago, I was playing football with his sons. One of them fled to Germany and then he had married with one woman from Paris, maybe three years ago, died. And he was here to visit me once. We remembered the old Lipany times. Peter Jurecký, Peter Jurecký. Let me tell you one more story about pharmacist Jurecký. He was a member of Communist Party, but then he crashed with his wife, because of bad driving, by Kežmarok. His wife died by crashing into the wall of the cemetery. So, then he wanted to go to Palestine. He had to write a request to the party's district committee, to ask for permission to travel. They summoned him to explain why, like a member of the Communist Party, he would want to travel to a Western state that flirted with American imperialism. He said that he will be there to strengthen the Communist Party's councils.

  • And then the pharmacist, a communist, had a night shift at my pharmacy. The next day I had phone calls, people were complaining that they came with prescriptions overnight, and no one opened them for hours.They told me that someone walked with a candle in a nightgown, over a pharmacy. And she did it, she had a night shift, normally she became a crackpot. Normally she walked over the pharmacy and did not respond to anything. Maybe she was afraid to open the door, or something. I had another story from that time, it was during revolution and one morning, I suddenly heard scream, scream. I was the only one guy in a pharmacy, and I changed my dress in the office and I had about six, seven women in the changing-room. Suddenly I hear screaming and crying, Doctor, Doctor come quickly, quickly. Oh god, what's going on. Don't go there, don't go there, Helenka is standing naked in the oven. She normally got some amok and became naked in the oven, shouting incoherent sentences. Maybe, against communism. Well, God, what do we do ? Call a psychiatrist. But finally, when it took half an hour and the woman couldn't handle it. She didn't want to dress, she didn't want anything. That was normally during working hours, so I called an ambulance.

  • So, I lived on Olomoucka street. This is a sally road towards Olomouc directly in the former monastery, in the hospital it was such a free hospital, we have been living there, we didn't have an apartment yet and we were caught there in 1968. And it is interesting that we were sleeping all night, we knew absolutely nothing, and at the same time one tank after another rolled down that Olomoucká street. Really? Yes. We were going over the street, we didn't have a baby yet. We went through the city and in such an old part of Opava and I heard a radio through the window. And in, and there they talked about what happened at night. Hey, that the Russians came and that it's occupied. And we were also going across the square and there were Polish tanks. The Poles were there. Poles, there? They had no idea where they were. People threw checks at them, they just hid. It was, well. I have more stories like this. Well, I was so nearby. Now I don't know if it was in Bruntál or in Krnov. The Russians had one huge garrison force there. Or Bruntál or in Krnov, I don't remember exactly, it's otherwise one district north of Opava. And a friend who was a doctor at the hospital, told me that the Russians came with something. They had such big boxed green cars as ambulances and transported some soldiers, that diarrhea, diarrhea. And there in the hospital, they found out they had typhus. Hey. Well, there in those, in those barracks or in those forests where they had temporary tents, it was right in the autumn, at eight, at sixtyeight, so. So, we are talking about soldiers, who were occupants, right? Yes, we are talking about those soldiers. They came because they couldn't get off the hook and also their male nurse couldn't help them, they couldn't stop it. When the doctors were told about typhus, they wanted to put them in the infectious disease department. And they said no infectious disease department, and transported them back, and then in those barracks was heard gunfire. They shot to death them, imagine, sick people at that time.

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    Prešov, 20.08.2019

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th century
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„I return to you the membership legitimization of the KSS and today I am leaving the Communist Party“

Anton Bartunek, was born on September 21, 1945 in Lipany, into a very religious family of two teachers who had five children. His roots come from several countries, as he says, they are such a „Central European, typical mix“. The memorial attended the Eight-Year School in Lipany, where he graduated in 1962. Later he decided to study pharmacy in Bratislava for five years. His student times, in the sixties, were fantastic for him in Bratislava. The memorial later graduated from two other universities, in Prague and Prešov, thanks to which he became the only one in Slovakia, who devotes himself to basic research in the field of the history of pharmacy and medicine. At present, he has even defended his doctorate, with an extensive 260-pages, dissertation thesis. Among other things, He was the first president of the Slovak Chamber of Pharmacy. He has beautiful memories of his childhood, but with the coming of the fifties, circumstances have changed. Slowly, but surely, a communist ideology was established in society, and with ideology came a new regime, too. People terrorized the farmers, who wrote inscriptions like kulak on the gates of their farms. In Bratislava, meanwhile of studying, he met his future wife, whom he married in 1967 and a son was born to them, three years later. He graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy in mentioned year 1967, followed by moving to Opava, where he began his four-years career as a pharmacist. Unfortunately, the memorial usually does not have good memories of the communist era. His father was almost jacked-out-of-office, or during his studies he was forced to join the Communist Party. Later, due to unsympathies with the regime, he had to change his workplace. He moved from Opava to Lemešany, where he also worked as a pharmacist. Subsequently, he obtained the position of operating pharmacist in Prešov. One of Anton Bartunek‘s activities was also the establishment of a VPN-Public against Violence, which was based in PKO in Prešov. He also organized the largest collection in the history of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, to help Romania, which was implemented in December 1989.