Jiří Boreš

* 1948

  • "I came up with the idea that it would be possible to photograph the documents, not develop them, leave them in the camera in a cassette and take them across the border to East Berlin. In case the customs officials want to look at it, I'll show that it's a cassette, that it's just a film. I would take it out and it was in the camera, which was the safest thing to do, so that nobody would be at risk. So I would open the camera and say, 'Jesus Christ, it's not developed yet. I thought it was already developed,' just playins an idiot. That way the person wouldn't be at risk, they would not be able to prove anything."

  • "In my year in England, I had a taste of what democracy can be - even if it is constitutional. Just to be able to read two good newspapers and go to the movies and the theatre I want to go to, and be free. I hadn't experienced that until then. The cradle of democracy - that's my love for Britain, still undying, but especially for Western-style democracy."

  • "In August sixty-eight, my girlfriend Daniela called me in the middle of the night. I didn't hear the first phone call because I was asleep, and then I woke up and I heard some strange noise and she said, 'The Russians are here!' So I got up and went to Toska's and asked what I could do, what the tasks would be. We didn't expect it. We were a little naive. We read and listened to all the different warnings, and we didn't like anymore that after the Two Thousand Words some people, especially the Communist Party, the Dubček wing, tried to calm us down. Because they were already worried and they were getting threats from the Soviet Union, which maybe they didn't understand very well, but I don't know what else they could do. To resign would have been stupid, people would have rioted. It was a big shock. So I went to ask what the assignments were, so I was a messenger among the journalists."

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    Praha, 17.01.2023

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    délka: 01:58:11
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    Praha, 19.01.2023

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
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In England, I had a taste of what democracy is

Jiří Boreš, 2023
Jiří Boreš, 2023
zdroj: Post Bellum

Jiří Boreš was born on 5 March 1948 in Prague. After finishing primary school, he entered the Budějovická Secondary School of General Education. He graduated in 1966. He then studied at the University of Economics in Prague, where he lived through the Prague Spring. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, in the autumn of 1968 he left for Great Britain, where he wanted to stay. He did not get a scholarship and returned to Czechoslovakia after a year. On his return, he met people from the dissident milieu. In 1972 he was tried for distributing the magazine Listy (Letters), but was acquitted. In the same year he was expelled from the university. To avoid basic military service, he pretended to suffer from schizophrenia and spent a year in a mental hospital. In 1976, he entered into a marriage of convenience with a German woman. In early 1977, he signed Charter 77. In March 1977, he attended the funeral of Jan Patočka. In May 1977, he and his wife travelled to West Berlin, where he participated in the publication of the quarterly magazine Informační materiály (Infomat). Until 1992 he worked at the Freie Volksbühne theatre. In 2023 he was living in Berlin.