Jiří Kráčalík

* 1954

  • “At the time when everything was really kicking off, we organized a total of six excursions. I remember it like it was yesterday because the first of them was to Mount Blanc. At the time, people were all over us trying to get there. Two buses left Ostrava at the same time. The year after, it was already twelve excursions and another twenty. Each one was unique. Not like today, when they constantly set up excursions to one hotel where they cycle through batches of tourists. It was incredibly complicated work. We arranged Mount Blanc, Matternhorn, and we were actually the first ones in the country to open up the Caucasus. I had contacts in Russia and I went there twice at the time, so it was simple for me. I remember once when some two or three hundred people signed up for one excursion with a capacity of forty-five places. Back then computers were just getting started, so we had to use the post office for everything.”

  • “I was entrusted with an army secret, regardless if I really understood what it was all about or not. I found out later that some of the most secret documents of the Czechoslovak Army had passed through my and other guys from the printing press’s hands, especially concerning the anti-aircraft defense of the country. There might have been, for example, plans for building a new shooting range, a base, or what not. But we only took pictures of it. Always some lieutenant colonel or another would come and say: ‘Guys, take a picture of it, but don’t make any negatives for making reproductions, we just need to put it into the archive.’ We did it on thirty-five millimeter film, they put it onto reels, labeled it, and then paid it no to mind to where it ended up afterwards. Later I found out that I was due to be vetted. They vetted my family, education, and whether or not I had someone who was close abroad. Otherwise I would have never gotten the position. However, once I for sure signed some document for them. I know that it was called PTZD, or Přísně tajné zvláštní důležitosti (Strictly Confidential of Special Importance). It was the highest vetting there was.”

  • “It was a valley which till today is called Masarykovo. In one of its rear sections there’s a monument from where it’s then possible to begin your ascent up Gruň. There was drinkable water there, so practically everyone living there at the time had to clear out. It meant deconstructing our house and moving somewhere else, just like we had to do. There were mostly wooden huts there. Mr. Charbulák, who owned a cottage on Gruň passed away. Below he also had a tiny shop, a restaurant, and a hotel. I remember how we used to go there. People had to give up everything. But it wasn’t only this way for Řečice, but Hutě and Smrkem and other villages. The reservoir stretches all the way to Staré Hamry, so it affected them as well.”

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    Ostrava, 27.02.2020

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People were are over us trying to get there

Period photograph of Jiří Kráčalík from the Czechoslovak People’s Army Championship in downhill skiing, winter 1974
Period photograph of Jiří Kráčalík from the Czechoslovak People’s Army Championship in downhill skiing, winter 1974
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jiří Kráčalík was born on 18 January 1954 v Ostrava. He spent most of his childhood in a part of the city called Radvanice, which at the time had transformed into a colony for workers and miners. To get away from the industrial environs, his family chose to spend time at their cottage in the Beskid Mountains, which would come to have a lasting impact for his entire life. This despite the fact that the village which the Kráčalíks went to, Řečice, ended up sitting at the bottom of the Šance Reservoir at the end of the 1960s. After being trained in the field of reproductive printmaking, Jiří began his mandatory military service, where in 1974 he won the Army Championship title in downhill skiing. Subsequently, he was transferred to the General Staff of the ČSLA (Czechoslovak People’s Army). After undergoing the highest vetting procedure, he worked in the cartography department as a reproduction technician. At the end of the 1970s he finished his secondary lyceum studies and took up a post at first in the Svoboda Press in Prague. Later he returned to Ostrava, where he worked for Moravian Presses starting in the early 1980s, and where he was a foreman of the Business Press of ČSAD (Czechoslovak State Transportation). During the same period he become a candidate for the KSČ (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) and later joined as a member. Following the revolution he published the magazine Hory (Mountains) and started a travel agency focused on advanced trekking under the same name. In 2003 he was part of putting together the International Festival of Outdoor Films, which he still runs today.