Jan Hammer

* 1957

  • "Rozhodně jsem nebyl žádný hrdina, což se projevilo. Jsem ale rád, že jsem tyhle věci prožil. Narozdíl od mé manželky, která by tahle léta mohla nejradši vymazat. I když i já bych deset let nejraději vymazal, když jsem přemýšlel, komu to dát za vinu. Což je nejjednodušší. Prostě stalo se, stalo. Ale jak říkám. Byly z toho nějaké patálie, byl to režim, který nepřipouštěl jiný názor. Když vystoupí človíček v zelené bundě, řekne pár neškodných vět a je z toho takové haló, že je celý okres, kraj z toho štajf, tak je na tom asi něco špatně. Takže jsem rád, že se to změnilo, že už to tak není. Jediný poučení do budoucna je, aby to už tak nikdy zase nebylo."

  • "Až v podstatě na náměstí od mého spolupracovníka Karla ‚Charlieho‘, když jsem vyplácel autobusáky, kterým jsem dával peníze z vydělaných peněz. Dával jsem jim stokorunu nebo [nějaké] peníze, aby jezdili. Tak mi Charlie říkal: 'Honzo, ty vole, vystoupil tam Havel!' Říkám: ‚No a co... Ani mi to nedocvaklo, ale fakt jsem to nevěděl, že tam bude vystupovat nebo vystoupí. Až když jsem přišel do amfíku, tak jsem viděl hrozen lidí vedle zákulisí a on tam něco podepisuje. Říkal jsem si, že to asi nebude dobrý."

  • "This thing with Václav Havel [his public appearance]. It was a moment I didn't even see. I wasn't even there. At that moment, I was walking towards the bus drivers, negotiating with them and bringing them money from the fund so they would drive until the end and not give up. As I was returning, Charlie ran out–we used to call him that–he was working with me at the Youth Club, and suddenly he says, 'Dude, Václav Havel made a speech!' I said, 'So he did. What about it?' Then, when I came there, there was a crowd of people around him. He was signing some bills. So I thought to myself, this is probably not going to be good."

  • "It was my parents who asked Dr Kašpar, a psychiatrist, to help me because I was already on the verge of a breakdown. Of course, he came but was accompanied by the police because they were afraid something would happen to them. He injected me with some sedatives, and then they put me in an ambulance, and I went to a psychiatric hospital. There they put me into a cage to be nice and well-behaved. The doctors there treated me well because they knew what it was all about. They gave me electric shocks like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [film]. It will erase your memory so that you forget the bad. The memories will come back to you in time, but you will forget some of the details completely."

  • "You won't even find it out. I know what caused it, the system. The system that was in place was the main culprit. That some little man - I don't want to belittle the person of Václav Havel - will come out there [at Folková Lipnice in 1988] in a green jacket and say a few words. Everyone gets a kick out of it, they [the communist apparatus] get a kick out of it, and then they wipe you out like a towel. What kind of system is it if you can't speak your mind? If he had said something edgy, but he didn't say anything at all. He just said he was happy that there was such a conspiratorial atmosphere and that he was performing in front of such a crowd for the first time. And that the last time he spoke publicly was in Klement Gottwald's Nová huť (New iron and steel works). And that was all. He walked away, and then things like this happened."

  • "Rough years had come for me. On the one hand, it drove me crazy, and on the other hand, I kept smoking during the interrogations. I couldn't stand it. When you have this disease, you feel like someone is watching you, even more so when they have windows right opposite here. I was so upset that I flew to get the State Security man, whom I knew where he lived. At night I dragged him out of the house and told him, 'Come with me or explain to me why you keep following me?' 'We are not following you. There's a light there, but we're not following you.' Then it escalated and escalated until I collapsed. It's a long story, which is not so simple in terms of explanation. It was the impulse, but it certainly wasn't the cause."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Havlíčkův Brod, 13.06.2022

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    délka: 02:42:31
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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    Havlíčkův Brod, 27.07.2022

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    délka: 01:10:46
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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    Jihlava, 26.09.2024

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The State Security interrogations were not the cause of my illness, but the trigger

Jan Hammer, year of graduation
Jan Hammer, year of graduation
zdroj: witness archive

Jan Hammer was born on July 10, 1957, in Prostějov. He and his family often changed residence because his father worked as a flying instructor in the Czechoslovak People‘s Army. Therefore, the witness grew up in Slovakia, spent his adolescence in Čáslav and finally lived in Havlíčkův Brod. In 1976, he graduated from the secondary electrical engineering school in Kutná Hora and immediately joined the two-year military service, during which he experienced harassment and bullying. From 1980, he worked at the District Enterprise of Housing Management in Havlíčkův Brod and joined the Communist Party because of his position as head of the establishment. At the same time, he started organizing music concerts, discussions and talks in the local Youth Union club called Julian bar. In 1986, he joined the organization of the music festival Folková Lipnice (official name Songs for Peace) and a year later became the head of the Osma Youth Club in Havlíčkův Brod. In September 1988, after Václav Havel‘s public appearance at Folková Lipnice, interrogations at the State Security began, which led to a mental breakdown of the witness. After one of his attacks, he was transferred to a local psychiatric hospital, where he was later repeatedly hospitalized. Subsequently, he worked several jobs, but after prolonged health problems associated with a mental disorder, the authorities granted him a disability pension. In 2001, he received an invitation from Václav Havel to Prague Castle. To this day, he receives outpatient treatment and lives in Havlíčkův Brod (August 2022).