We hadn’t done anything, we just wanted to be Scouts
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Jiří Nýdrle was born on 29 December 1932 in Nová Paka. As a boy, he experienced the short-lived renewal of the Czech Scouting Movement after World War II, and he became a Scout heart and soul. In the early 1950s he participated in the activities of a secret Scout group. In 1954 he was arrested by agents of State Security and sentenced to four years of prison in a show trial. However, his good behaviour earned him a reduction of the sentence, which he spent in the labour camps around Jáchymov, and so he was released already in 1956. He then found a job as a tool setter at ZPA. He was a long-serving functionary of the Nová Paka Car Club and chief of the district voluntary fire brigade. He co-organised car and motorcycle races and participated in some of them himself; his work for the car club allowed him to visit Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. He had a fire station and various master-level racing buildings built in Nová Paka. In the early 1990s he participated in the renewal of the local Scout centre. He still attends Scout gatherings and meetings of the fire brigade committee.
