Tomáš Ježek

“On the twenty-third of August I was with my brother Martin at the [National] Museum at the moment when they let fire on it, they thought that something was going on there, that it was some kind of HQ. You can still see the bullet holes there, and I was there when it happened. I was up the top, where the ramp is, there are three entrances to the Museum. Of course I was afraid because they were shooting over my head. Luckily, one of the glass panes in the entrance was knocked out clean, there weren’t any shard there, so I launched myself from where I was standing, jumped through the window and rolled over the marble floor. I made use of my physical prowess and thus got myself out of danger. In the evening I talked with my brother, he said that at that moment he was lying in the fountain a few metres away.”

“I myself participated in the samizdat, I published some things in samizdat. Those were people around Emanuel Mandler and Bohuš Doležal. We published these kind of books, and we earned the money for it in such a funny, almost touching way. We had a friend somewhere in Satalice, and he provided us with some land. We cultivated garlic on it. We sold that and used the proceeds to buy paper and things like that. I samizdat published my translations of Hayek, both The Road to Serfdom and his big book Law, Legislation and Liberty, that was all published in samizdat and distributed around Prague.”

Vojtěch Ježek: A Lidice Mother I, shades of eyes behind bars, a Lidice mother, I, nailed to the cross, I ask you – Lord, did you see when they took the babe from my arms? Did you hear the shot, and how the man toppled down? That was our dad. His mouth stained by blood and a little dirt. Tell me, please, Lord, will he have eyes, when he rises from the dead, or just tear-stained shades as I, as I? You’re silent. Do you reign only over the stars, or also among us? I accuse, I accuse, Lord, not you – them. [Vojtěch Ježek, Tomáš Ježek’s father, wrote this poem on 24 September 1944 before being transported from the prison in Pilsen-Bory to Dresden, where he awaited trial. He was executed in Leipzig on 13 April 1945.]

“July 1990, when Havel made one rather, in a good sort of way, nasty remark. He said: ‘Economists, what’re you doing? Where’re you lazying about? Its half a year after the revolution and I can’t see a single private-owned pub in Prague. I’d love to visit one, but there isn’t any here, so when will it happen?’ So I thought that we’d have to come up with some method to make it faster, so we came up with the small privatisation, which with hindsight proved to be an excellent idea. It had great results. The privatisation concerned properties such as pubs, hotels, restaurants, workshops. The word ‘small’ is some kind of journalistic shorthand, or the public started calling it that. The defining trait lies elsewhere. Only tangible assets were sold, but the liabilities remained with the old company. So the company was taken apart bit by bit, it was sold off in those auctions, it retained its liabilities, and those were settled by the proceeds amassed on the ministry’s account.”