RNDr., CSc. Doc. Milan Kopecký

* 1937

  • "The very next week I went to Chropyně to look for number 78 and found it. The house had a garden. I went to the garden, I looked, I was standing by the fence, and sure enough, there was a lady in the garden. And I'm standing on one side of the fence, the lady's on the other. Well, she wasn't standing by the fence, she was further away, but not so far away that at one point we probably saw each other. We greeted each other and the lady asked me in a very kind and beautiful voice: 'Hello, are you looking for someone?' Well, I took another breath and said: 'Madam, maybe, and most probably, I am looking for you directly, because fifty years ago I probably met you on a bench in Varhošt'. ' And the lady stared for a moment and then this came out of her: 'For God's sake, is that you with the dog?' Again, I played a totally second violin, maybe third, fourth, if such a violin exists, but the dog won. I said: 'Well, the dog is dead, but I'm still alive, and I'm very glad that you, Jiřinka, are alive too.' And this lady at that moment turns around and says: 'Karel, make coffee, you won't believe what I'm about to tell you.' So, it turned out that Karel was her very nice husband and they invited me for coffee. Jiřinka and I together told Karel our story, Karel liked it very much, I thanked them later, I invited them to lunch, if they would come to the Flora exhibition, which I think was already going on then, I probably wouldn't have had a reason to do it otherwise. Then they came with their son. It turned out that we still had a lot to say to each other, it was very pleasant. Unfortunately, in 2011 I received a phone call that Jiřinka had died, that she is going to be cremated, so I started moving again."

  • "I will tell you that I remember the date of July 2, 1990, when we were told by the faculty that if we wanted to have a look at the future workplace, we were to arrive at 2 p.m. in front of the former military headquarters building. That someone would come who had the authority to unseal the sealed building and de facto make a sort of first inspection of the building. I've been instructed by this Dean Hodaň to go in there myself, so I'm wearing short sleeves... Two soldiers came in, and right at the unlocking, they started putting on a chemical suit, or an anti-chemical suit. I was staring at what was going on. During the opening, they both had dosimeters, which is a measurement of radioactivity. And so now I was proceeding down the lower corridor, and they were looking to see if they could measure there. I remember the one saying: `What if there's a timer that actually identifies movement and now it's just like an explosion?' So, they said: `Stay back, so we're going to kind of have to look at it like we have to, but we're going to proceed very carefully.' I describe it in great detail because like when I wake up at night I see it, so then I also got into the office of a commander of some sector, I don't know what sector. So, it was some Soviet general who actually has an office where the faculty of education now has the dean's office. So, there I thought, there was no explosion like I don't know. But the truth is that at least I was able to take away some plans, which I saw for the first time. Well, when I showed it to our dean Hodaň, we were sitting around wondering if it was possible to build an auditorium there, because it was all offices. Relatively like medium size or rather smaller, so like some kind of lecture hall for sixty people, I just guessed. So, I actually started ordering a structural engineer, then again some crew came and looked at it, they were military people, to see if there really was some kind of explosive device. When it was determined that the thing might actually be like a unobstructed thing, they did the inspection, then the structural engineer came in and we started building."

  • "I would really call this episode the Dog, because he really plays a pretty crucial role there. The story really started sometime towards the end of the war, because my grandfather, because he had a farm, he also had this big yard. And I, as an eight-year-old boy, soon found out that there was a group of German officers who sometimes met in that yard. One of them used to come to these meetings with a dog, a beautiful, red-haired, long-haired dog that he called Waldi. I, of course, being eight years old, found that here was a chance to have a dog nearby that I liked very much, so I started to be friends with this Waldi as much as I could. And I remember that actually on the last day of the war, which was the eighth of May in 1945, there was still a group of German officers in our yard that morning. And the one with the dog. Then, perhaps around half past ten, they somehow dispersed, because some vehicles were coming, which they were supposed to jump into and leave. The owner of the dog either didn't make it, I don't know, all I know is that he jumped into the trailer of the motorcycle and then left with the driver of the motorcycle. The dog flew after this motorcycle, I ran out in front of the house just to be present. Now, when I saw that dog running away, I was kind of like sadly accepting that I had actually lost a great friend, so I was counting on never seeing that dog again. Then a few hours later, maybe three or four hours later, the Soviet tanks actually started coming from the other side. We were already in front of the house, of course we were welcoming the end of the war, everybody was completely excited. So, we were just waving, shouting with joy, and now I'm looking at these vehicles coming and these tanks, and now I see that on the fourth, fifth, just the xth tank I see a dog. A rusty, long-haired one, next to a little soldier who just appeared there in that view as well. And now, as the tank slowly passed by me, I called out to the dog: 'Waldi!' The dog jumped off the tank, jumped on my shoulders with his paws, almost knocked me down, and now we were really hugging like lovers. It must have been quite comical, of course the tank drove on and the Russian soldier sort of beckoned me, I sort of understood the beckoning to keep the dog, that what would he do with it on the tank. So, I was very happy that I actually got a beautiful Irish Setter on the first day of liberation, which we then renamed Lord because we all liked him, dad, mom, we all liked him. He really was a wonderful dog, so we changed it from Waldi, which always reminded us of that German, to Lord, and I started going for walks with Lord around that Velký Újezd."

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During the war, the border with the Great German Reich was created behind our village

Milan Kopecký in 1966
Milan Kopecký in 1966
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Milan Kopecký was born on 20 April 1937 in Hranice na Moravě as the younger of two children of Maria and Jaroslav Kopecký. His father, a teacher, got a job in 1940 as headmaster of a school in Velký Újezd, where he came from and where the family lived together with his grandparents. During the war, the village was adjacent to the German Reich. My grandfather had a farm and a timber business. In 1946-1947 Milan Kopecký visited the German village of Varhošt‘ several times, which was displaced in 1947. In 1948, his father was dismissed from his position as school principal. Milan Kopecký had problems with his admission to the grammar school, and eventually graduated in Olomouc. In 1955-1959 he studied at the Faculty of Science of the University of Education in Olomouc, majoring in mathematics and physics. In 1961 he married his classmate Emílie Cvachovcová. In 1964, he started working at the Pedagogical Institute in Olomouc (later the Faculty of Education at UPOL). He was persecuted for his attitudes towards August 1968 and was allowed to stay at the faculty, but he was not allowed to habilitate until 1989. He is the author of many professional publications for students. After the Revolution, he served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Education, and from 1996-2002 he headed the Department of Mathematics there. His wife died in 1992. He retired in 2007. All his life he devoted himself to music, especially to playing the piano. He and his wife raised two daughters. In 2023 he lived in Olomouc.