Ing. Jiří Rak

* 1957

  • "For me, the feeling of satisfaction was disrupted by the break-up with Slovakia. At the beginning, I was among the few who thought that it might happen, and then it began happening. November 1989 contributed to it, in my opinion. The Slovaks have quite a different mindset from us, whatever others may think. I think they do, although I have friends among them. They just have a different view of many things. November (1989) was not their own, Havel was not their own, and we Czechs were mostly unable to understand their perception of the world. I'm sure we meant no wrong, but we certainly often acted a bit superior and protectorial towards them, even those of us for whom it wasn't natural. There were, of course, many people who looked down on the Slovaks. Most of us thought that they shared our happiness and we were unable to understand they felt differently about things, and that was quite bad. So, November wasn't theirs, Havel wasn't theirs at all, and he didn't know how to approach them. When they 'greeted' him with rotten tomatoes, he was surprised. That was his naiveté, as nice as he was as a person or as democratic as he was as a politician. He could never understand that. And I don't blame them for speaking up and wanting to be left alone. To them, Czechoslovakia... They sort of languished under President Novotny. I remember as a child he treated them condescendingly. When he visited Slovakia, he would admonish the local officials, or he would come to a farm cooperative and send the chairman to change his shirt and so on. That was Novotny; it must have felt terrible for the Slovaks, and that's why they took the first opportunity and quit. Today, they say that Mečiar and Klaus did it. I don't think that's true. All of us who are a bit older certainly remember that. There were these 'bonfires of liberation'. They would hike in the mountains in the summer of 1992 and light those fires, gathering round and clamouring for Slovakia. There were those quarrels in the parliament, there was a war over the dash, and eventually Mečiar and Klaus decided that rather than argue, it would be better to part amicably. And somehow it worked out; we are going our own ways, that's the way it is, and I guess it's not wrong. As much as we would have liked to, at least us Czechoslovaks... I remember me and us here saying a lot that we were Czechoslovaks. Us Czechs used to say that we were Czechoslovaks in Czechoslovakia. A Slovak never said he was Czechoslovak - a Slovak always said he was Slovak. That's where I see the difference - the way we understood it. They meant Slovakia and we meant we were the citizens of Czechoslovakia."

  • "I have a rather specific memory of that. My grandfather from Brno was just visiting us in Prague and I came home from the after-school club in the afternoon. He was in our living room, telling the story; I remember the words. He said he saw a human torch burning. We were in shock. He said he was sitting on a tram going up Wenceslas Square to the Museum and turning towards the main station. That was then; there is the arterial road there now. He saw a person on fire running from the Museum ramp to the food store on the corner. There were these switch booths at streetcar intersections where the switchmen worked. The switchman ran out and started slapping the person, Jan Palach, with his huge coat, trying to put out the fire. Grandpa saw it as his tram was slowly passing by. Just imagine: my grandpa was a tram driver in Brno. He came to ride a Prague tram as a passenger and just happened to witness the situation first-hand at that very moment. Live action. One more thing; my mother taught Palach at the University of Economics; he attended her classes." - "Did she talk about him?" - "She said in retrospect that she didn't remember him very much; he didn't make that much of an impression. Given how many students there were, most of them did not capture her attention... He was not somebody special at a glance. That was all she had to say."

  • "In '68-69 I was old enough to perceive it. I guess I wouldn't have perceived it as strongly at age seven, but I did at ten or eleven. I was already in the know. I was in the know so much that in March of '68, when I was eleven, my parents would let me go from Žižkov to Prague alone. I went to Prague Castle and crammed myself into the courtyard where there were crowds of students waiting for the election of the President of the Republic. There were, if I'm not mistaken, two candidates. An army general, Ludvík Svoboda, and the other one was called Císař, Čestmír Císař. I hope I got his name right, I'm not sure. The latter was considerably younger, in his forties. The students were chanting in favour of Císař. His surname means 'Emperor' in Czech. So then the 'Emperor' came out on the balcony and addressed the students, 'Thank you for your support. I thank you, students, for your support, but let's accept the choice of Ludwig Svoboda, because he is a man with many years of experience and has connections to neighbouring countries and is a guarantee of peace.' So the students murmured, but in society, especially among the older and oldest generations, the name Svoboda was a symbol of great bravery. He wrote the book From Buzuluk to Prague, if I'm not mistaken. People were aware of his military life during the war and his fighting at Dukla. Even though the information, as it transpired later, was not entirely unambiguous. But at the time, he was a universally accepted hero and his election as the President of the Republic was accepted unequivocally. So, I was there as a child when people were in that courtyard waiting for him to be elected."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Ústí nad Labem, 02.03.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:04:25
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - Ústecký kraj
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

He witnessed Aeroflot office smashed up by a riotous mob in Prague at the age of 11

Jiří Rak during military service in Cheb, 1980
Jiří Rak during military service in Cheb, 1980
zdroj: archive of a witness

Jiří Rak was born in Prague on 14 May 1957. He came from an intellectual family, his mother being an educator at the University of Economics and his father also working in the education sector. In 1969, he briefly became a boy scout before the regime banned the movement for the second time. When he was eleven years old, his parents sent him to a convalescent home in Jetřichovice in the Děčín area where his lifelong love of the region, also known as the ‚Bohemian Switzerland‘ began. As a grammar school student, he organized trips to the countryside for his classmates. His parents disagreed with the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops, lost their jobs, and were expelled from the Communist Party. Because of this, Jiří Rak had trouble being admitted to university, but thanks to his mother‘s connections, he eventually graduated. He met his wife Hana at the university, and they married at the Libochovice chateau in 1982. They raised son Martin and daughter Alena together. Having worked with companies dealing in industrial gases for several years, he took up the destination manager job at the Bohemian Switzerland public benefit society in Krásná Lípa in the Děčín area in 2005. In 2008, he went to the Urals as a Linde Technoplyn representative, helping with the rollout of industrial gas sales in Ekaterinburg for three years. He then returned to his former position with the destination agency, and continued working for the agency part-time after retirement. In 2023, the witness lived alternately in Prague and Krásná Lípa.