Zdeněk Jirásek

* 1958

  • “I could remember this moment, as all the employees had been summoned to this hall, where there was this local Communist party unit chairman, who kept telling us to be calm, stating that all would be just fine. And I came forward, stating that all would be fine after they would just shut up and leave, and everyone would just abuse me, like they always did in such cases. They would yell at me, wanting to know how I could say something like that, whether I wanted to reinstall the capitalist system, as this old comrade kept asking in quite a loud manner. And everyone else was just sitting there, with their mouths shut, even those who were with me. There was no one who would come forward to support me."

  • “I experienced this narrow border between power and powerlessness. I could comment on this later, as we would get to the Civic Forum, but as I came back from the army, I made an oath that I wouldn't turn into a bastard like they were, that I would never behave like those people I witnessed during my military service. Maybe it was more difficult in Cheb, as most of my fellow soldiers served time in prison, so they weren't nineteen years old when they started their military service, they might be twenty five or more, and they had some experience.”

  • “And this friend of mine, he left for England, he didn't do his military service, he didn't have to, and he sent me this postcard from London while I was in the army. That was a bad thing, you know, that you would get this postcard from abroad where capitalists were in power. It wasn't delivered, of course, but there were those two men in plain clothes, from the counterintelligence, and they took me to some room for an interrogation. And they started to ask me: 'Do you know people abroad?' - 'No, I don't.' - 'Are you in touch with people abroad?' - 'No, not at all.' - 'Have you been exchanging letters with anyone abroad?' - 'No.' - 'And how would you explain this?!' And he would show me that postcard, slamming it against the table. 'And how would you explain this?', he yelled. So I looked at the postcard for the first time in my life, there were those British guards with their enormous hats, and there was my address and he wrote: 'Hello, Zdenda, many greetings from London,' and underneath that, there was: 'PS: I had almost been appointed the King of England, as far as golf was concerned.' As we used to play golf together, we were quite fond of it. And they insisted that this was some kind of a code. 'What does it mean, this code of yours?' - 'I don't know.' To make it short: I spent the whole day with them, as they came to pick me up before I could have breakfast, and they held me until the very evening. And they were interrogating me all the time. And there was this well known pattern, as there were two of them, and this one would come into the box, he would be the good cop, and he said: 'Don't be stupid, don't spoil your career in the military, just tell us what does it mean, and you can go, you are free to compete in that thing of yours.' And maybe I would even tell them, being just nineteen years old, and I was just scared, but I couldn't tell them anything as there was no code. Then came the second man, he would yell, he would be banging on the table, and he would threaten me with Sabinov, this well-known prison in Eastern Slovakia, and he felt free to decide how many years I would spend in prison, and as they got nothing out of me – not that I was brave, there was nothing I could tell them – so in the evening they would take me elsewhere, the case was closed, and on the next day, they would just throw me out. And they would call me, stating that I had to present myself in Cheb at a given time.”

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I experienced this narrow border between power and the powerlessness

Zdeněk Jirásek while serving in the army
Zdeněk Jirásek while serving in the army
zdroj: Archiv Zdeňka Jiráska

Zdeněk Jirásek was born on December 12, 1958, in Chrudim, and he spent most of his life in Slatiňany. While doing his compulsory military service, he had been accused of being a spy, as he got a postcard from a friend in London, and as a result, he had been assigned to a penal battalion in the city of Cheb, which formed his worldview for the years to come. He witnessed the brutal practices of hazing, common among the soldiers at that time. He had been working at the ČSAD Company (Czechoslovak National Automobile Transport) as a controller and did athletics in his spare time. In 1989, he signed the ‚Just a few words‘ manifesto, and he would spread the word among his peers and neighbours. In November 1989, he co-founded the Civic Forum in Slatiňany. After serving some time as a councilman at the local level, he left politics to work as an instructor, a social worker and a caretaker in a hospice in Chrudim.