Lubomír Gižický

* 1933

  • “I did an entrance exam to technical school. But I was then informed that I wasn’t accepted. So I asked one of the teachers there, as he lived next door and I was friends with his son, and he told me that my father wasn’t of working class origin and that he was a technical clerk, and for that reason I wasn’t entitled to study. So I trained to be a construction mechanic at the Czechoslovak Construction Works. But I don’t have my certification, I missed out on that because I decided to flee the country at that time. My mum’s brother, my uncle that is, he was much younger than my mum, so I got talking with him and we agreed to skip out over the border. We had that agreed, in the time of our preparations I met up with one classmate from my extended studies, one Jan Krejčí. One word led to the next and I was there telling him I was getting out of here, that I wouldn’t stay no longer. He suggested it would be a good idea to make some strike first, so that we gain some renown abroad. Okay, so me and my uncle agreed to loosen some screws on a cement lift in the cement plant in Vítkovice where my uncle worked. Because cement was a strategic material at the time. No explosives, nothing like that, we’d just loosen the screws holding the lift, so that when it started moving, it would fall down and delay production.”

  • “Before the trial began my public defender arrived and said: ‘Sonny, you have a complicated case. They’ll probably hang you.’ He told me a complete nonsense. I was eighteen years old and didn’t have the foggiest about legal matters. They locked me up in May and I turned eighteen in July. And the trial wasn’t until autumn. It was a wonder that they treated me like a juvenile, that I had committed the crime when still under age. That’s why I got only six years. My uncle was only a participant, and he got nine years, because it was me who organised and led the whole thing.”

  • “Three months. And yet everyone knew. I don’t understand why it all had to be. The doctors in Tišnov put me together again afterwards, because my feet were like this. I couldn’t put any shoe on. My feet were horribly swollen. That was a consequence of the interrogations by State Security. By the time the interrogations were definitely over, my heels were mashed up. I don’t want to speak about it much. Because I still don’t know, to this day, who interrogated me. I was underground and they put sunglasses on my eyes, they were completely black. Then the warder took me by the hand and led me to some office and sat me down on a chair, pulled my arms behind me, handcuffs, and I was turned into a punching bag. They kept asking me things. And I kept saying: ‘I don’t know anything. You know everything. Krejčí must have told you everything.’ That lasted three months, those interrogations.”

  • “Then when the interrogations were over, they sat me in an office with one, what for me was back then an older bloke. He was about fifty at the time. And I know he was smoking a pipe and tapping away at a type writer, preparing the report. Then he took the one sheet of paper, passed it to me and said: ‘You’ll sign that for me.’ I looked at it and it was written there that they had treated me decently. I told him I couldn’t sign that. ‘You don’t have it, your choice.’ He pressed a button, the boys came in and threw me into a cellar. Without shoes. Just socks, trousers and a shirt, into this small room under the stairs, just slightly larger than an armchair. I don’t know how long I was there, because it was pitch black in there. I don’t know how long, but it was a considerable length of time. The concrete was freezing cold at first, but it stopped hurting after a bit. Then the warder brought me some ersatz coffee and half a slice of bread. I said: ‘Tell him I’ll sign it.’

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    Ostrava, 31.10.2013

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I had a complicated case and for that they would probably hang me

Lubomír Gižický
Lubomír Gižický
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Dr. Andrej Gjurić was born in 1938 in Prague. His father, Dr. Alexandar Gjurić, M.D. was an outstanding doctor, a specialist in gastroenterology. He came from Bosnia and since 1923, he worked at the II. internal clinic of the Charles University in Prague. During the Second World War, Alexandar Gjurić, with his brother in law Vladimír Vacek and friend František Procházka, got involved in the local anti-Nazi resistance movement. They cooperated in particular with Vladimír Klecanda and Vladimír Krajina, and with the Political Center of the national resistance movement and the organization Central Leadership of Homeland Resistance (ÚVOD). Gjurić used his contacts in his native country and organized the so-called „Yugoslav tunnel“ that was used for funneling messages and people from Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, their activities did not escape the Gestapo. In April 1941, Vacek and Procházka were arrested and in April of the following year, the Gestapo came for Alexandar Gjurić as well. A year later, all of them were sentenced by a People‘s Court in Dresden to death for treason. On July 10, 1944, Vacek and Procházka were executed. Gjurić was guillotined on August 16, 1944. He left behind his wife Dahlia, née Vacková, and young sons Andrej and Alexander. Andrej‘s aunt, professor Růžena Vacková, narrowly escaped execution at the end of the war for also being involved in resistance activities. The family struggled to make a living and after 1948, it was subjected to further persecution. In 1952, Růžena Vacková was imprisoned by the communist regime and she wasn‘t released until 1967. Andrej Gjurić studied librarianship, but soon he began to take an interest in psychology. He at first worked in the university library, then as a research assistant at the Institute of Culture and Journalism of the Charles University. In 1968, he actively participated in the activities of the Club of the Committed Non-Partisans. For this reason, he was forced to leave his job at the university in the beginning of the so-called „normalization“ period. In the years 1970-1975, he worked as a corporate psychologist in the company Geoindustria, later as a consultant for a marriage counselling office specializing in marital and premarital counseling in Prague. After November 1989, he became involved in politics. He ran and was elected to the Czech National Council for the Civic Forum and later he served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies until 1996. In 1991, he co-founded the Civic Democratic Party (ODS). In 1996, he unsuccessfully ran for the Senate for the ODS in Příbram. Later, he was briefly a member of the Freedom Union. Starting in 1999, worked as a secretary of the interdepartmental commission for the family and children at the Office of the Cabinet of the Prime Minister. He died on September 27, 2015.