Jan Malášek

* 1945

  • "The main trials concerned either desertion or disobeying orders. Other things, like rape, were not considered. As far as I know, my dad told me that he never sentenced anyone to death. He said that he never gave life to anyone, so he didn't want to take it away from anyone either. But I'm pretty sure that some of those people who didn't get the death penalty were sent to the front line, which in itself meant pretty much certain death."

  • "That was in the sixties. My first trip abroad, to the Soviet Union. I had already finished a year at the Secondary Technical School and transistors were just emerging, but the Czechs weren’t making them yet. But we knew - because I was on the electrical engineering course - that transistors were being made in Russia. And so I found myself on the way to Kiev because I wanted to buy some. Volhynians (Czechs in Ukraine) who went to Russia on regular visits already knew what to bring - a coat, shoes, things like that. And once in Russia they would get five times more money for them. It was considered normal. I bought a coat for 400 crowns and immediately sold it there for five times as much, for 2000 rubles. The ruble and the crown had pretty much the same worth. So I had 2000 rubles and with them I bought 300 tiny transistors in Kiev. There was a store where you could buy them. I didn't even know what kind to buy, as there are a lot of different kinds. I didn’t know which ones would be the most suitable, because there are also special transistors. Fortunately, I was able to sell them again and I sold them for around thirty crowns per piece. And I brought almost 300 of them, so I got ten thousand crowns [laughs]. That was incredible. I turned four hundred to ten thousand. And I didn't sell it all at once, always a little at a time, and people knew me by then. So that's how it started, that's how I got the feel for smuggling.”

  • "It was plain to see from the name of the street attached to the building. So I thought to myself: 'Well, this must be Italy.' I saw that on the Slovenian side it said 'ulica', whereas on the other side I could see 'via' written on the sign. So I go and say to myself, I feel so tense, you could not imagine: 'What now, what now? Should I walk all the way to the train station and check it all out again?' Then I think to myself: 'No, there will be policemen there on guard and they will have already received a message.' So I think to myself: 'That's it, I can't think anymore.' At first I stopped thinking completely , I calmed down, I walked for a while, then I made a left turn, straight towards the border. I walked about five steps and was barely 20 meters from the border, from the fence. I took about five steps and then started to run. And as I started to run, I suddenly hear police whistles from at least three different places. It was a mess, loud whistles from all sides. All I knew is that that I had to climb over where the pole was, that I couldn't move anywhere in the middle, because I wouldn't be able to get over the fence, it would have been too loose. I had to grab the barbed wire with both hands, but I just flied over, at such a speed! I tossed my bag over the fence and jumped after it. I kept running away as soon as I landed and the whistles stopped. I grabbed my bag, kept on running and suddenly there was complete silence. There was a group of people, they were looking at me from the other side of the street. Then I looked around and all around there were only signs in Italian, so I must have arrived in Italy."

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    Brno, 09.02.2022

    (audio)
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The whistles fell silent behind the barbed wire

Jan Malášek in 2022
Jan Malášek in 2022
zdroj: Post Bellum

Jan Malášek was born on August 14, 1945 in Prague. Both parents, Anna (born Pajerová) and Jan, were members of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, the so-called Svoboda‘s Army, during the war. After 1948, the family had to involuntarily move out of Prague and Jan grew up in Liběšice in the Litoměřice region. In 1963, he decided to emigrate from Poland to Sweden on an inflatable dinghy. He was caught during his attempt and spent eight months in prison in Gdańsk and two more in the prison in Litoměřice. Three years later, in the spring of 1966, he tried to emigrate a second time, this time successfully. After a football match in Belgrade, he crossed to the territory of today‘s Slovenia, from where he illegally crossed the border into Italy. He spent 15 months in Western Europe, after which he moved to the USA, as there was a lack of job opportunities in Europe. For a year he did all sorts of side jobs—shrimp fishing on the ocean; working for a New York restaurant, in a Las Vegas casino or in a factory in Los Angeles. In 1968, he moved to the Pacific, where he stayed for the next 50 years - mainly on Hawaii, but also on Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji and the island of Tonga, from where he watched the Velvet Revolution happen on television. After the eruption of the Kilauea volcano in 2018, he lost his home and returned to the Czech Republic from Hawaii. In 2022, he lived in Říčany near Brno.