Vít Pelikán

* 1953

  • "I got to Palach's week when there were protests. Together with my wife, we took the early express train to Prague, before the protest was supposed to begin. We reached Wenceslas Square and sat in one cafe since morning. We spent about two hours drinking coffee and tea. The militia closed the whole square and we got out of the cafe in the middle of Václavák, so we were in the centre of the action. Somehow, they couldn't push us from there. Some people had been pushed aside to Můstek, some people to Opletalova and to other streets. We stayed there as long as possible before they launched the water cannons. Or, I went to a protests on 28th October in Prague, I don't know in which year. We caught a shower with water cannons. They were pushing us away along Narodni trida. A woman was hit by a policeman with a shield there. Policemen used those large shields. They thought someone was going to shoot at them, or I don't know what. So they had batons, helmets and shields. My wife looked at the cop and hit him in the shield, saying, 'How dare you do that to a woman?' He really felt so ashamed that he ran to the side, to not have to hit anyone. I personally attended some of these demonstrations. It was always very strong. It was evident that the regime is disintegrating and it is only a question of time, when will it collapse.”

  • "It was in connection with Dr Fučík, Holeček and Mrs Kuželová. They issued samizdat. It is quite well documented as the action "Saturn". Dr Fučík had the name Saturn in the StB register. He was being watched very closely. They no longer attempted to hide their publishing and printing activities in any particular way. StB also followed them to us. Then they took me for interrogation and wanted some information from me about who and when visited us. They asked me if I refused to testify under paragraph 100. According to it, I could have refused to testify if that should harm a person close to me. I said, 'I don't refuse to testify by paragraph 100.' So they said, 'Okay. So tell me if you know Dr. Fučík. 'I said,' I refuse to answer you to this question because it connected with persecuting people and it is against human rights. I defined it like that. And they said, 'So do you refuse to confess or would you confess?' I said, 'I do not refuse to confess.' So they asked me again if this or that person visited me. And I answered ‘I refuse to answer this question since it is aimed at suppressing freedom and human rights.’ We repeated this around 10 times. They were from Ostrava, and after this, they were pissed off and let me go home. After that, they remembered me and knew not to interrogate me."

  • "We were carrying books and had to pass through a forest, on the way to a road. I heard that the car, Skoda 1203, was driving around the woods to the place where we had roughly arranged. I wanted to come out of the forest to stop them. All of a sudden, as I was coming out of the woods, I saw a guy arriving on a bicycle with a dog. So I backed away and hid so he wouldn't see me. The 1203 followed right behind him. So as I hid, they drove past us. They did not see where we were, drove past us and drove a further kilometre to Lešany. As they entered the village, at four in the morning, the police stood there, stopped them, and inspected the entire car. There was nothing in the 1203. Friends thought they arrested us. There was another car, driven by Martin Kvapil. He was supposed to pick up other people. They met just outside of Lesany. They saw there were none of us with suitcases and backpacks and drove back home. We stood in that forest and I heard “Yeah, good, they are driving back again”. A car drove up the hill. I wanted to get out, but I saw that the car's lights are off. As they came closer to us, where we were hiding, we saw that they were cops. Without lights, it was clear they were after us. They passed us and did not find us. So we stood there for a while thinking about what we should and shouldn't do. We knew the others didn't come. So after half an hour, we found out that they had probably been caught. We thought of each other that we were arrested. We threw pieces of wood, branches, leaves, rattles and whatever we found in the forest over the books. We went over the hill to Kostelec na Hané and took the first workers' train at five in the morning to Olomouc. We immediately went to Martin Kvapil to find out what was going on. We found that none of us were arrested, that it was a trap we managed to avoid. The gentleman on the bike with the dog who rode there saved us. We were sure it was the Guardian Angel on the bike. “

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    Olomouc, 09.01.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:35:35
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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The goal was not anti-state resistance, but to live in freedom

Vit Pelikan historical photography
Vit Pelikan historical photography
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Vít Pelikán was born on September 19, 1953, in Olomouc, where he grew up in the villa of his grandfather, academic sculptor Julius Pelikán. His uncle Jiri and his father Vladimir were communist reform politicians. After the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops, uncle Jiří Pelikán went into exile. In high school and later at the university in Zlín, he was a part of the music and visual arts underground. His sister Iva and brother-in-law Mirek Vodrážek lived in Prague, they were among the signatories of Charta 77 and supporters of the underground. In Olomouc, Vít joined the group publishing the samizdat book edition Texts of Friends. Under their influence, he converted to Christianity and was baptized in 1978. He and his wife Hanka belonged to Christian communities that met for prayers and meetings. He reproduced and distributed the periodicals Information about Charta 77, Letters and information about the Church. For his activities, he was monitored and wiretapped by the State Security (StB), repeatedly detained, interrogated and several agents were deployed to follow him. He tried to support political prisoners - from organizing protest hunger strikes to participating in court trials. The STB prevented him from participating in the planned unauthorized protests and, on those days, guarded him or detained him immediately. From 1984, he worked as an independent researcher at the Research Institute for Pharmacy and Biochemistry. He took part in the National Pilgrimage to Velehrad in 1985. In January 1989, he experienced a protest in Prague known as Palach‘s Week, and he was also present on October 28 in Prague. In November 1989, he organised manifestations in Olomouc and joined the Civic Forum. He served on the civic commission investigating Public Security, State Security and events in the Mírov prison during the totalitarian communist rule. After the Velvet Revolution, he continued his profession as an economist.