Ing. Jan Kašpařík

* 1936

  • "…nothing about nothing, but the ending was interesting. Again, the bad one said: 'Well, we're going to say goodbye to you now, and we wish we wouldn´t have to meet you again.' And I said, 'On the contrary, I wish everything could be cleared up properly,' and I was off. It wasn't the 1950s, they wouldn't have let me do that before, I know that well. By that time I knew I could afford it, they were too weak to do it."

  • "[We were at Malinovského square], and there were some people in the surrounding streets. It looked like this there: they basically stopped there, the fire pumps pushed people out, so they started firing tear gas. Those were tear gas cannons. They were firing the tear gas and I had already known the way it worked, that it took a while to ignite because they were firing it with some kind of a fuse. And when that one piece ran close to me, well, I immediately went after it, I was going to throw it back at them. But, as I aimed thoroughly and hit it with all my might, it hit a phone box which other protesters were hiding behind, but they immediately moved out of the way before it exploded."

  • "I had a major problem with this at the local committee where I once came forward to say that I was refusing to sign a document on behalf of the People's Party about cooperation in the National Front, because as a party member I was also a member of the National Front. I was vice-chairman as a People's Party member, the chairman [of the local national committee] had to be a Communist. I refused to sign such a document which required the principles of Marxism-Leninism, and the reaction of the Chairman of the Communist Party was very interesting. I said, 'I must first agree with the district party committee whether I can sign this document, since it refers to the principles of Marxism-Leninism.' Then the chairman of the Communist Party sprang up and started shouting something like, quoting, 'Surely nobody doubts that the Soviet Union liberated us!' So the main argument was this, and the result was, not that the vote was delayed, but that it was never voted on again, and probably they signed that it had been voted."

  • "The transport seemed to be mostly old, poor people, and our fellow citizens immediately tried to offer them something to drink. It seemed to me that the ones who were leading them [the Germans], the armed men, were such show-offs, as we used to say, with machine guns, and they were actually chasing our people away, so it was a problem to let those people drink. I was about eight years old at the time and I remember that well and it was pretty rough on me too."

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    Brno, 16.09.2021

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I always gave everything about myself right away

Jan Kašpařík, First Holy Communion, 1944
Jan Kašpařík, First Holy Communion, 1944
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Jan Kašpařík was born on 22 December 1936 in Blažovice into a traditional Catholic family to parents MariE and Jan Kašpařík. The family spent the end of the war in the cellar, where the father had separated one part with a wall and had hidden food there. In the near village of Holubice, a bomb fell on his mother‘s parents‘ house during an air raid, killing his grandmother. Jan witnessed the arrival of Soviet soldiers in 1945, their inappropriate behaviour and later the expulsion of the German inhabitants, who were accompanied by young gunmen. His father had a blacksmith shop in their house and after 1948 he was forced to join a cooperative farm. After graduating from secondary school in 1956, Jan graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Brno University of Technology. He worked as a technologist in the engineering industry (Drukov) and for several years as a technical teacher at an evening secondary technical school. During the loosened political situation in the 1960s he worked with various architects on major projects all over the country. He personally participated in the 1969 demonstration in Brno on the one-year anniversary of the occupation, the demonstration was violently suppressed. During the period of normalization, he had great difficulty finding employment and was also removed from his post at local national committee where he represented the Czechoslovak People‘s Party. He refused to sign a document claiming his belief in Marxism-Leninism principles. In 1969 he married Marta, née Kuklínková. They had three children, daughter Jana (1969), son Vít (1970) and Pavel (1975). When he worked as a maintenance worker in the local cooperative farm, because he could not find a suitable job, he was called in for questioning by State Security officers. In the Security Forces Archives a file has been preserved where he is listed as a person under investigation. He took advantage of his earlier contacts and started working at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Brno University of Technology, first as a technician and later on a higher qualification post, but with the same salary. He actively participated in the events of the 1989 revolution, he was involved in the Civic Forum and was elected deputy mayor of Blažovice for the Czechoslovak People‘s Party. All his life he played sports, organized ski courses, played various musical instruments and devoted himself to making of brass instruments and unique measuring devices. He founded a local brass band, the Tibia Music Group, and to this day (2022) he lives in Blažovice and is dedicated to research and production of unusual musical instruments.