Ing., Arch. Jan Sapák

* 1957

  • "And then, I once came [home] in the evening. I rented a small room then. And I dropped by Věra Běhalová because I had no mobile phone and I was not at work for quite a while, I had left long time ago. So, she tells me: 'Where have you been? I've been looking for you! You became a Member of Parliament and you need to be at a session tomorrow morning.' And now: 'How would I go there?' And she says: 'Well, Hana Holcnerova has been searching for you. She managed to get hold of me. But, accidentally, my nephew (or some such) is here and they're going to Prague with Škoda 1000 MB [shoddy car], they're returning, and they will give you a lift, right?' So I stayed somewhere, they were in such a small apartment, and they took me to Prague. We left Vienna at five in the morning and I managed to arrive at the session, in such a bizarre way, and I got the papers. There was some sort of cooptation, we were sworn into office, Kalvoda and those people were there, and I was in the first group of people coopted into the Czech National Council."

  • "In that house where I lived, one Miloš Pazdírek lived, and he was the same age as my sister which is closest to me. And he had historical motorcycles, old ones. And at Moravské náměstí [Moravian Square], where the Rudé Právo [Red Law] had its local branch, you don't even know what's there these days. There's some liquid bread or what is written there. At the backside. So, Rudé Právo was there but there was a gas station as well. And he went to get some gasoline there. Or so he said, but maybe he was curious and wanted to check the demonstrations as well. And when he arrived there, they systematically picked people. Actually, they cordoned off whole streets and blocks as they had done during the Heydrich Terror. They cordonned off the area and as when you use a seine net to fish out the whole pond, and they wanted to arrest all the people. Which then happened. And because there were so many cars and there were also tanks and People's Militia along with the police, and they had many buses to take the people away. And the people were hit with a big fear because they knew that it's getting tough, that it is not just some police skirmish. And then were houses for example, and they ran into those houses and stole in the apartments. They knocked, rang, begged the people and went inside. And this acquaintance of mine, in such a panic and terror, he ran into one house that stood where the parking building is now, to some lady's flat. She hid him in his flat and so on. But the policemen who combed through the houses checked all floors and created an atmosphere of a really urgent fear. So they appealed at all those people who hid someone, because they guessed or knew it, to hand the people over. And many of those people, maybe not all of them, that's what I don't know, handed them over. Because they were so consumed by fear, because it seemed that they [the police] would go on breaking into the flats, which was a possible threat. Really, that, the atmosphere, I dare say, that it would be comparable maybe with the Heydrich Terror. Thus, this lady pushed him out of the flat, there were more of them, they [police] grabbed them and in the house itself, there was the first bastonnade, they were badly beaten and the police spat at then and cursed them and beat them with the truncheons. Then he was taken to a cell in Bohunice where, as he had said, he was with some 25 guys in a normal cell which is normally for two prisoners. So they couldn't even sit down. And so it lasted for three days. And then, his mother who was a housekeeper, such a person as the housekeepers are, she guessed what was going on. She saw the body of Muzikářová, which they showed to her in morgue. And she was looking for her son. She did not find him. She also had some… she cursed the police. However in our neighbourhood, there lived a high-ranking policeman, so through this connection, she got him out of that cell after three or four days. And they said, he was not able to lie down to sleep for three or four days. He had to sleep sitting. Maybe he was on verge of death. It was quite serious. And such a case, those were almost all of them. Open terror, really, bullying, beatings. So that was the '69 in Brno. And that was maybe one of the moments which lead to the collective spirit being broken."

  • "People sometimes thought that those dissidents do not physically exist at all. They thought them fairytale characters. This was very widespread. It sort of worked this way in people's unconscious."

  • “Eventually, three people came in August 1988, Regina Petržalková, wife of that film director, who carried a baby in her arms, Pavel Barša, and his wife. They dared to come to the plague column and lit candles on the railing. We the others were standing aside, ten or twenty metres away from them and did not dare to come closer. And we were no cowards, nope. We were really, that's what I think, the first wave. A secret police came and pushed it aside with his elbow. Those candles. So that they fell down. They did not dare to confront Regina as she had that child but they grabbed Barsa and dragged him so that he had his heels against the pavement, so they dragged him. They did not do anything to him but it looked very dramatic and those were terrible experiences for us. They kept him for four or five hours somewhere.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Brno, 14.08.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 03:05:54
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I wanted to emigrate several times but at the end, I decided that I would stay and help so that we would live to see the change.

 Jan Sapák v roce 1976-1977
Jan Sapák v roce 1976-1977
zdroj: osobní archiv pamětníka

Jan Sapák was born on the 6th of March 1957 in Brno. He grew up in Pekařská Street along with four siblings in a family which was certainly not in accord with the Communist regime. He practically did not go to kindergarten, he was growing up on the street and became a leader of a street gang. He wanted to become a painter but eventually he became an architect. He considers his work in the Liberec-based architectural firm SIAL as one of the important periods of his life (1984 - 1988). He participated in several interesting projects, such as the reconstruction of the Trade Fair Palace in Prague but he also encountered many notable persons. In November 1988, along with Pavel Barsa, they started the Brno Forum which helped to awaken people in Brno. He followed the Revolution from Vienna where he was on a job assignment. He returned to Czech Rebublic at the beginning of 1990. At first, he was summoned to the Czech National Council, in the first free elections in June 1990, he was regularly elected for a two-year-term. He ended his political career after two years. From 1992 on, he has been working as an architect, author, expert witness and a guest lecturer at various universities (currently at the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague). He wrote several books. In 2019, Jan Sapák still lived in Brno.