Ilja Hradecký

* 1945

  • "It was obvious. We didn't originally intend to set up an organization, but there was a situation at a certain point where there were people who needed help. And we were able to help them in some way. It happened when we came from the cottage in Černá Voda to Prague after three weeks. There was no TV, radio or newspaper at the cottage, we hadn´t known what the situation was, what was going on. We arrived in Prague and on TV we saw footage from the main train station and from Holešovice, where the refugees were. At that time we had already been working for the Salvation Army, and for us it was a signal that it was possible to help there. If the Salvation Army wanted to start they could make a reputation there. That was the first idea. But the main thing was that there were people who needed help. We divided up tasks. I went to have a look at the station, while my wife was preparing food in the kitchen and our children went shopping. When I came home, we took food, sausages, bread, we went to the station and gave them food. That was quite easy. Train station charity. It wasn't any big deal."

  • "We bought a car and went home. We spent a night in the car in a car park in Germany and then we drove to our country. When we were driving up the old road in Rozvadov, there was no car anywhere, nothing was going on that road, and I needed a stamp from German customs so that we could declare the car. I stopped but there was nobody there. So I honked the horn and a fatty came out. He was still drowsy, his cap askew. I showed him the papers, said I needed a stamp, and he waved his hand. Then there´s hill and there was a barrier. A big log. It snapped shut behind us, and then another barrier, and then another one. And that was an ice-cold shower because it was September 1969. That was before normalization started and from the distance, from Paris, it still looked idyllic, but this was an ice-cold shower. That's when I thought that the cage had been locked. That's the end. We're not going to get anywhere."

  • "I was sent to the labour department of the district national committee. There I saw that they were playing a foul play with me, because they always recommended me a job, and when I got there, the job was no longer available. So I went around like that, I don't know what the aim was, whether they wanted to bring me to my knees, I don't know. So I found a job myself, as a stagehand in the Olomouc theatre, because I was interested in theatre. They would take me there, and so I went to the office and said that I had found a job. Well, when I came back to the theatre, suddenly there was no job again. After that I did it in a completely different way. There was a state enterprise in Olomouc, the Automotive Repair Plant, where they repaired military trucks Tatra 111s, and they needed people. I didn't ask anybody, I took the job and worked there for a year or two as a car mechanic before I joined the army."

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Return to Czechoslovakia felt like an ice-cold shower

Ilja Hradecký  on the Charles´Bridge in the 1960s
Ilja Hradecký on the Charles´Bridge in the 1960s
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Ilja Hradecký was born on 1 May 1945 in Zlín, where his parents worked at the Baťa factory. His father, Josef Hradecký, worked as a culture focused journalist and his mother, Julie Hradecká, worked as a foreign correspondent. After the war, witness´s father faced accusations of collaboration because he had also written about German culture during the war. The accusations were disproved. In 1951, his father had to leave his job of an accountant in a printing company. Within the campaign called “Operation 77”, which meant 77 000 thousand people sent to manufacturing sector, he started to work as a steamroller stoker. After finishing primary school, Ilja Hradecký began an apprenticeship at printing works in Olomouc and at the same time he started distance studies at a grammar school and a graphic arts school. In 1965 he had to join the army and served at road troops. In 1965 his father tried to officially apply for emigration to Austria with the whole family. Ilja Hradecký was an eyewitness and a photographer of the occupation on 21 August 1968. A month later he travelled to France intending to emigrate. However, he met his future wife Vlastimila there and in 1969, after their wedding, they returned to Czechoslovakia. They settled in Nitra in the 1970s, but under pressure performed by State Security and military counter-intelligence, they moved to the village of Branná in the Šumperk district in 1976. They bought a cottage in nearby Černá Voda, where they organized meetings of young religious people in the late 1980s. In 1990, he and his wife helped Romanian refugees and founded a charity organization “Hope”. They built one of the strongest charity organizations in the Czech Republic, which has been working up to now.