Ondřej Kohout

* 1953

  • "As I recall, we arrived at the Czech Embassy (in Vienna) with Jirka Chmel and a few other people and applied for visas. They refused to communicate with us at all. It was not yet clear what was happening in Czechoslovakia. We refused to leave the consular section until they gave us visas. They called the local Cobra police unit that we were terrorists, who threatened them and refused to leave the Czechoslovak embassy. I called my father (Pavel Kohout), who came to the embassy and calmed the unit. He talked to them and explained the situation to them. Fortunately, they made no action - to shoot us down... It was sometime in late November. In the end, they gave us visas, so it worked out fine somehow."

  • "One didn't even realize what it was. I was still a child only fifteen years old. We saw tanks, we saw Russians. We knew roughly what it was all about, but we still didn't realize the consequences. It was a bit of a dream that we only got out of in the years to come."

  • "It was already after the occupation in 1968, but in 1969 it was still possible to travel abroad. That's when I went to Munich with two friends my age for a part-time job. At that time, I think it was possible to exchange only fifteen marks for the entire stay, which we did, and we took a bus to Munich. In the summer of 1969. And we wandered there for about three days, until we found a job with an electrician in a construction company, and they found accommodation in a monastery. It was very interesting. In August, it was possible to watch the events that were taking place in Prague at that time. I remember talking to my father (Pavel Kohout) on phone after the repression in Prague, and I asked if I should come back to hear that intellectuals were being arrested. I was sixteen, so it sounded a little funny. He said I had to decide for myself, he left it to me. I decided to come back. One still hoped it would not be as terrible as it finally was. But my parents came to see my two friends and they stayed in Germany, so I came back alone."

  • "If a person went to university at the time and wanted to continue in his field, I would tell him that he probably has to arrange himself with the regime in some way - for example, by membership in cetrain organizations. Obey what they want. But if it contributes to the person's well-being…? His conscience wouldn't ease it, he would feel bad. The question is whether he would be satisfied with such a life. My recommendation would be to act the way I think I should act, no matter what I want politically. Then one can look into own eyes. I think that's the main thing that people missed then."

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    Vídeň, 24.02.2018

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Alcohol was a pleasant stimulus under socialism

Archive photo
Archive photo
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Ondřej Kohout was born on May 20, 1953 in Prague. His father is the writer Pavel Kohout, his mother Anna worked for Czechoslovak television. She has sisters Kateřina and Tereza, the writer Boučková. In the capital, he attended an elementary school in Presslova Street and a grammar school in Štěpánská. The father had not lived with the family since the late 1950s, but remained in contact with his son. It was thanks to his father that he found himself in the West for the first time in 1967, at the beginning of the Soviet occupation in August 1968 he also returned from the West with his mother, and on the first anniversary of his troops he was on a brigade in Munich. He was expelled from the scenography at DAMU due to the regime, but eventually finished school. In 1975 he married Eva Vonešová, their son Mikuláš was born, and after a while they divorced. After the intervention of the State Security at the Railwaymen‘s Ball in 1978, he signed Charter 77. He remarried Eva and in 1981 the whole family legally moved to Austria. After November 1989, the witness began to return to his original homeland, but still lives in Austria.