Jaroslav Havlík

* 1952

  • "When did you believe that it really changed?"-"When I believed that it really changed, I can tell you. That's not related to this. That was maybe a year after I went to Bohemia. I took my bicycle with me because we used to ride a lot and we used to go to the mountains a lot. So I took my bike with me. And Staré Splavy, that was a just little bit away from the so-called forbidden zone, the area where the Russians had been before. And I said to myself, 'I'm going to take the road I know,' and in the past it hadn´t been possible to go any further. So I was riding there, it was a nice feeling and there were beautiful places in the woods, beautiful, so I enjoyed it. And I got to Hradčany, which had been the famous military airport . When it had been absolutely ridiculous in those days to just approach it from, say, five kilometres away. No way, because there had been guards everywhere and everything. Well, I went there on my bicycle, there were still barbed wires, but I climbed over it, anyway. Suddenly I saw this amazing airfield, huge. These hangars, so to speak, underground. And I brought the bike in. I got going. And there I said to myself, 'And now they're f...' - I don't want to say the 'f' word. 'Finally.' And there I believed it, there I knew they were gone. And that it's different. What's happened in the years up to now is a different stage, sadly. But at that time, that was the important moment that I told myself, 'Yes, it is true.' And thank God - whatever it is now, thank God for that."

  • "After six months they started visiting me, doing house searches, threatening and harassing me, every time there was something happening they would come. Among us, I must say, there was a kind of informer or what to call him, a police informer, because they knew exactly what was going on there. And I got scared. And I was scared more and more, I had ‘my’ officer, I can't remember his name now - it's in the files - who quite unpleasantly... They didn't beat me, but they interrogated me quite unpleasantly. I was always taken from the cemetery, driven to Jindřichův Hradec, and there I was interrogated. And then they kicked me out, and I had to walk across the whole town. And it was unpleasant. And then, I was just scared. Anyway, at that time it was enough to have long hair and beard, which I had, and the situation was already so tense in normalization, that you could just be walking down the street and immediately a police car which was passing by, or a patrol car, would turn around, a check, harassment - you don't have the same long hair on your ID as you really do - [you got] a fine and so on. And you had to be good and obey, because the moment you said something, they would pick you up. So anyway, although I liked the cemetery, the cemetery started to flourish because my friends had started to help me, we uncovered all the tombstones, we refined the whole beautiful fourteenth or fifteenth century cemetery. But the harassment was getting worse and I decided that, although I hadn´t wanted to for a long time, I would try to escape too."

  • "To go back to that day. At that time I was passing through or walking along Italská Street, above the [Czechoslovak] Radio, and I could already see part of a barricade made of buses and trams. And [I could see] tanks going there and trying to break through it. And I had a rather cruel experience from those side streets near Italská Street, on our side. Namely, the tanks were already breaking through the barricade, and a man came from the side street with a huge Tatra, a truck, and people were persuading him to let the truck go, towards the barricade, and somehow prevent it [the breakage] from happening. He was making a decision for a while, I can still see it lively, then he got into the car, started it up and jumped out. But unfortunately there was a man at the barricade and the car ran over him. Which was awful. Then it got worse because the Russians started shooting, some of the tanks caught fire, started shooting and that's when we got scared and we were running home. I'll never forget that for the rest of my life, I have that image still in front of my eyes and I have to say - not only because of that - I really don't like the Russians."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Slavonice, 05.08.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 02:12:39
  • 2

    České Budějovice, 19.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:37
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Fear drove me to emigration

Jaroslav Havlík in 2020
Jaroslav Havlík in 2020
zdroj: Post Bellum recording

Jaroslav Havlík was born on 23 April 1952 in Prague. His mother, Edith, née Spitzerová, came from a German-speaking Jewish family that survived the war; his mother was one of the children who left on a train organized by a group around Nicolas Winton. The witness trained as a mechanic and graduated from a secondary technical school after finishing his evening studies. Even before that, on 21 August 1968, he experienced the dramatic events near the Czechoslovak Radio building. He was interested in big beat and made friends with people belonging to the underground culture. In 1979 he became the caretaker of the Jewish cemetery in Jindřichův Hradec. He lived there in the caretaker‘s house. At the weekends, friends who shared an interest in music gathered at his house. State Security was interested in non-conformist youth. State Security officers harassed Jaroslav with house searches and interrogations. As the pressure from the secret police increased, Jaroslav got scared and decided to emigrate. In 1981, he went abroad with an officially organized tour and applied for asylum in the Federal Republic of Germany. For 12 years he ran a restaurant in Swabia. In 2000 he moved permanently to the Czech Republic. He has been a photographer for a long time and has shown his pictures at exhibitions. In 2021 Jaroslav Havlík was living in Člunek near Jindřichův Hradec.