Jiří Lang

* 1931

  • "The time came when Jan Masaryk was murdered. That is why I describe in my file here that we founded the resistance group of Jan Masaryk. It made us angry, because we said that he was such a nice man and that he had to pay for his beliefs with his life. We never doubted he was murdered. Because when his funeral was, it was said among the people that everyone should go to watch (I have a photo of his funeral somewhere) to go from the left or the right side, as he lay there in that coffin. That people should be careful, that there is a shot in the head. That there are bouquets of flowers and that it is hiden."

  • "There was a famous so-called Franta Ramus. He was a warder almost two meters tall, wide, a massive guy. And he screamed while being on his duty, so everyone in the prison knew that Franta Ramus was on duty that day. He kept pounding and slamming with that rubber baton also into the prisoners, not only into the wall, the door and the benches. That was Franta Ramus. Then there was such a small dwarf, such a wren. He was screaming all the time, curious about everything, when a person received a document, a letter and had to hand it in, he tore it up. He had such a piercing high voice, so it was the second one. There were those of different natures. When it started with those political prisoners, there were some, such an old group of those warders who favored the political ones or they tried to. When they took us to Zámrsk, it was also quite harsh in the first days, the warders. And suddenly those more intelligent warders, they already felt that they could not treat us like those thieves and murderers, that we have a completely different mentality and intelligence. Because they were mostly students from grammar schools, industrial schools, conservatories, the professions that could not be compared to the others. Although the others have prevailed there so far. Gradually, another group of political ones came there, they were from Prague, then also from Slovakia and other regions, so the political ones began to be there one to one or even more."

  • "At home, according to my parents, they turned it all upside down. In the room where I was learning, they dumped the whole secretaire on the floor, looking for something, who knows what I had or didn't have. Otherwise, everything in the whole apartment was upside down... I had climbing shoes that were chained with such special spikes for climbers, so they stole them. I had an album of Czechoslovak stamps, on the one hand there were reprinted miniature sheets and on the other hand there were unprinted miniature sheets, because I was collecting stamps in a philatelic and amateur way. So, the stamp albums disappeared. They just took what they liked. I had the military boots that were worn with the riding tights, so they took them up too."

  • "One from such cruel interrogations for me was when they started saying that I was a Catholic Scout, that I could pray. So they took the office chair, the one with the back rest. 'So, kindly took off your shoes, kneel here on that chair, put your legs through the backrest, and now clasp your hands, you can pray, can't you?' Suddenly they put pencils between my fingers, and one of them started to push the ends of the pencils, as they were sticking out from those clasped hands. And they began: 'So how was it?' This and that and who, what and how... I thought, you bastards! I didn't say a word, I started praying quietly and kept quiet. And they kept doing it until they broke the pencils and some of the splinters injured me between my fingers, because a pencil won't crack just like that. "

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We founded the Jan Masaryk Resistance Group

Jiří Lang, a photo of that time
Jiří Lang, a photo of that time
zdroj: archive of the witness

Jiří Lang was born on June 9, 1931 in Brno - Horní Heršpice to the family of Jan and Hedvika Lang. After the war, he joined the renewed scout unit, where he got the nickname Orko. A year later, he moved to the 64th homogeneous (Catholic) unit, which operated at the parish of the Minorite Church of St. Tomas in Brno. Together with his friends, officials of the division, he founded the resistance group of Jan Masaryk on March 11, 1948. Together, they assumed an early reversal and intended to enter into a possible uprising with a weapon in hand. During 1948, they ran leaflet campaigns and undertook several unsuccessful actions to acquire weapons and transmitters. For the mass production of leaflets, they stole a Cyclostyle copier from the office of the collaborating Catholic student event. In January 1949, the group was uncovered and its members arrested. In the group Čapek and others, there was Jiří Lang, then still a minor, sentenced to an unconditional sentence of two and a half years in prison and to a fine. He served the prison sentence at the Institute for Juveniles in Zámrsk. After his release, he could not continue his studies, he was employed at the Rožínka uranium mine and until his retirement he had worked as an electrician at the Academy of Sciences. He spent his old age with his wife in Brno-Horní Heršpice.