Jan Pijáček

* 1958

  • „One day, a group of people come, and they already knew they would come to confiscate the cattle so dad’s cousins forcefully dragged dad to a storage room with massive wooden doors and they locked him up there. There was only a small window, they stuffed it with canvas bags so that nobody could hear him yelling. They were worried that he would fight them. If he did something like that, he would go to serve the eight years of his suspended sentence. So the cousins had to lock him up. That’s what I wintessed as a small boy.

  • „I remember how the secret police was running around, how they booed at the Minister of culture, how the secret coppers were all over the place dressed like tramps because they thought it was some tramp meeting again and everybody obviously recognised them for what they were. And when there was this part of the Mass when the congregation shake hands, a circle assembled around them and everyone shook their hands so they marked them this way so that everyone in the crowd would know. It was quite a remarkable experience and it was uplifting, nobody expected that something like this could happen at that time.”

  • „When the Russkis were spreading in the area, we were, because Orel [Eagle; Catholic sports’ club] still worked, in the meeting room and now we heard the tanks passing by, so us the small children ran outside and today I say we stoned the Russian tanks. There were small pebbles on the road so we took handfuls of those and threw them at the tanks so there was this unplanned symbolism, small children stoned Russian tanks. Then the adults ran outside, obviously, smacked us and dragged us back in the building because they were rightfully worried that in case the soldier lost their nerves, they could start fire.”

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    Vlčnov, 18.03.2021

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When the rights return to us

Jan Pijáček in folk costume during the annual village feast. Ostrožská Nová Ves, first half of the 1960's
Jan Pijáček in folk costume during the annual village feast. Ostrožská Nová Ves, first half of the 1960's
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jan Pijáček was born on the 11th of July in 1958 in Ostrožská Nová Ves. He grew up in the family of a former political prisoner, Antonín Pijáček, and Marie, née Kovářová. In June 1948, his father was arrested during an attempt to illegally cross the borders to Austria and he was held in court custody in prisons in Znojmo and in Uherské Hradiště. There, he was subject to heavy torture with electricity and to beating on his feet, which caused him lifetime issues. He was sentenced to 16 years for grand treason and imprisoned in the forced labour camp at Jáchymov uranium mines. He was released after eight years. In connection with the agricultural collectivisation, even his wife’s family members were persecuted. The persecution of the father extended to the son until his adulthood. Jan apprenticed at the State Wood-processing Trade School in Valašské Meziříčí. He was attached to tramping and he became a member of a nature protection association Tis [Yew]. He met his wife in a tramp music band, Traband, and they raised their three children in the spirit of scouting, in faith and love of nature. Together, they settled in Vlčnov. In the 1980’s, they distributed samizdat materials and during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, they joined the Civic Forum. Jan entered the local politics and he was elected as vice-mayor for two consecutive terms; later, he served as mayor for the Civic Democratic Party (until 2017) and and a council member for the Zlín district. He was at the establishment of the Eastern Moravian Slovakia microregion and the In 2010, he took over the position of the chairman of the ICCN (INTER-CITY INTANGIBLE CULTURAL COOPERATION NETWORK) who … organisations caring for intangibule cultural heritage (in the case of Vlčnov, it is the Ride of the Kings, which has been listed on the Representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO). He sat on various advisory boards of several ministries. For several years, he was a member of the Czech National Committee for UNESCO. In 2021, he was awarded for his lifetime care for cultural heritage by the President of Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman. He was also awarded the Jože Plečnik award. In 2021, he lived in Vlčnov.