Dalibor Funda

* 1955

  • “Míra ‘Felix’ Bureš told me back then we were watched over by cops and state security; I don’t really know why he was so open with me. He showed me a guy crossing the street opposite the town hall, wearing a winter coat, cap, and scarf, and he said: ‘It’ll be tough on him.’ The guy was wearing light summer shoes. We would just pass by him nonchalantly. Maybe he thought we would try to make him go away. It’s stuck in my memory like it was today. He was wearing those military shoes. They were really thin, paper-like, with an extremely low heel, and of a nasty brown hue. I remember I wore them in the military later on. He was wearing those, though other than that he was dressed right for the winter. Míra Bureš said: ‘Let’s make it not so easy for him.’ We left Planá passing by the swimming pool towards Výškov, and Míra said: ‘Let’s leave the road and walk the field now.’ There was 20 centimetres of wet show in the field. Being boy scouts, we were prepared well – we knew we had to wear high boots because there was wet winter snow. We were ready. The cop went on stealthily for maybe ten more metres, but past the forest, which ends on the left when you exit Planá – there is a small water well kiosk – he turned round, dropped into the forest and was never seen again.”

  • “There was the First of May scaffolding on the north side. The mayor – or the Chairman of the Local National Committee at the time – used to stand there along with all the regime officials and people who welcomed the Russians in 1968 and so on. The brass band used to be the first to come and they just played there. That was the last time that we as scouts took part in the First of May celebration. We were wearing our uniforms, and Young Border Guards were marching behind us. They were an offshoot of the ‘pioneer’ organisation. I’ll get back to that. Many children joined them because a radio brigade of the Border Guard was stationed in Planá. They lived in the castle, and so there were many officers and top brass of the Border Guard living in Planá’s residential development. There was no confrontation, in the sense of them enforcing communist policy. We simply coexisted, especially during the thaw of 1968. Some children from the Young Border Guards were pretty arrogant, though. One of them started shouting at us; I won’t name him, but others joined him: ‘Scouts are c…s!’”

  • “It felt like the developments were dragging on forever. So, I got some paper tubes like you use to carry drawings; they were 50, 60, or 70 centimetres long and had a lid. I wrote town names on them – Stříbro, Mariánské Lázně, Planá, and Chodová Planá, and I had a contact in each of the towns. For example, there was Tonda (Antonín) Kraus in Stříbro, and in Planá there was Mr Kalaš, the first post-1989 mayor of the town. I went to the Florenc bus station and gave the tubes to the bus driver, and my contacts would pick up the tubes with information leaflets, magazines and newspapers from the bus luggage compartment at their respective stops. Later on, we used big rolls. This is how the distribution worked back then.”

  • “I was reading a newspaper and eating something. As I was reading, a baton hit my paper and my shoulder. A cop and an armed railway guardsman grabbed me and took me to the station police office. They sat me down. By then, my train to Planá had left. They had me sit there for like 20 minutes. A guy came in. He brought a one-third glass of beer and some food wrapped in paper. He opened it, and it was the black head cheese. He sat opposite me, and I wanted to ask him. ‘Shut up!’ He was cutting the head cheese with a pocket knife and sipping beer. I remember it like today. I asked him: ‘How can you eat the head cheese without bread?’ He jumped out at me and started shaking me. He grabbed the knife, got on the table and cut my entire pocket with the badge off.”

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    Plzeň, 14.07.2021

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Let us stand straight as an ash tree, be equal in our deeds and work!

Dalibor Funda in 1968
Dalibor Funda in 1968
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Dalibor Funda was born in Planá in the West Bohemian borderland on 23 July 1955. His father Dalibor Funda Sr was arrested and imprisoned following February 1948 and his trucking business was seized. The witness joined the renewed Jasan (Ash) boy scout centre in Planá in 1968. He was very fond of scouting, but the umbrella organisation (Junák) was officially banned again in 1970. The witness completed a grammar school and enrolled in the Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague to study architecture in 1974. Following graduation, he considered leaving the country; he and his partner even managed to leave for the West, but his partner (future wife) refused to stay abroad, so they eventually returned. The witness took part in anti-regime protests before 1989. During the Velvet Revolution, he distributed leaflets with information about the latest developments to his native town and its surroundings. Later on, he took part in the restoration/refurbishment of the Kramář Villa and development of government facilities. In 2010, he released a book of short stories loosely inspired by his family’s chronicle, Poslední promítač ze Sudet (The Last Cinema Projector from the Sudeten). He lived alternately in Prague and Planá in 2021.