Jiří Kocián

* 1939

  • "Majka kept saying, 'Don't fly, I just know something bad is going to happen!' - 'But what could happen,' I said, 'nothing will happen, don't worry.' - 'No, don't fly, I know it, don't fly, something will happen!' Well, there was nothing I could do. I got on that plane. So we said goodbye, I got on the plane, I found a seat, and we took off. Everything all right, nothing. So it took some time. It's not a long way to this Budapest - it had a stopover in Budapest. And I also asked in Yugoslavia, where I bought the ticket, if there were checks in Budapest. She assured me there weren't any. So I said, 'Okay, that's good.' So I sat there calmly. We landed. When we landed, I was a little bit rattled because there was a cemetery below us. We flew 20 metres above the gravestones. I said, 'That's some bad sign. She's telling me something's going to happen, but what could happen now? We're already at the airport...'"

  • "So there were these viewing stairs from the west side, so we could climb up to the viewpoint from the west side and see all the way there. It was terrible. Because there was about ten or fifteen meters, maybe even twenty, open area, sand raked so that every footprint would be visible. Only the dogs were running around there. And the border guards, they were armed as if they were going to war, and they had huge binoculars, and they were always staring at you, immediately taking pictures of you..."

  • "We got on the tram, and everything was silent. Only at Drápal's, when she got off and new people got on, a lady got on and sat behind me and had a transistor radio on. And she says, I can hear her saying, 'It's going to be terrible when people find out what happened.' 'It's going to be terrible when people find out what happened.' It made me flinch. I thought, 'Jesus, what happened?' And suddenly we hear, 'Keep calm, do not resist.'"

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Olomouc, 28.03.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 03:01:39
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Olomouc, 13.04.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:58:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 3

    Zlín, 25.04.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:48:32
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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A year after the occupation, signs appeared saying, „Long live the Soviet Union!“ So I decided I wasn‘t going to stay here

Jiří Kocián at the time of the birth of his son Petr, 1978
Jiří Kocián at the time of the birth of his son Petr, 1978
zdroj: witness archive

Jiří Kocián was born on 21 December 1939 in Konice. He grew up as an only child in the family of Vlasta, née Novotná, and Miloslav Kocián. His father ran a confectionery on Konice Square until the ban on trade. Jiří aspired to become a forest engineer, but because of his cadre assessment, he was not accepted to the forestry school. He trained as a turner in Lutín, and from the age of 16, he worked in manual occupations. He experienced the August invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Olomouc. In 1969, he emigrated to Austria, received political asylum and was hired to work in West Berlin at the Siemens factory. In June 1970, he went on holiday to Romania, where he met his then-girlfriend and later wife Marie Vejmolová. Their plan to escape together through Yugoslavia to West Berlin didn‘t quite work out, and their stay abroad was longer than they had anticipated due to two failed attempts to cross the border. Eventually, their paths diverged in Belgrade, Yugoslavia - Jiří had to return to work, and Marie was waiting for her visa to Berlin. During a stopover in Hungary, however, Jiří was spotted by customs officers and dragged off the plane. After being detained in Budapest, he travelled to Komárno, Bratislava and finally to the Bohunice detention centre in Brno, where he spent several months. After almost two weeks of waiting in Yugoslavia, Marie obtained a transit visa to travel to Berlin. When she did not find Jiří there, she returned to Czechoslovakia through East Berlin. They received suspended sentences (20 and 14 months for 3 years) from the court for illegally leaving the republic (§ 109). Jiří Kocián worked for many years at the TOS company in Olomouc, and in the mid-1980s, he became an insurance agent. Between 1988 and 1989, he took part in anti-government demonstrations in Prague. In 2023, he was still living in Olomouc.