Václav Šašek

* 1935

  • "And then I got tired of it in the 60s, I said, I can't go on like this. So I wrote a complaint to the Constitutional Law Committee of the National Assembly. Simply during the war, for example during the Second World War, of course, whoever was punished, whoever was abroad, whoever escaped from the Germans, the Germans prosecuted him here, and in general he had it difficult here. So of course I listed all those there that I was treated here the way the Nazis were treated, right, with those. So that I feel like a black man from the southern states, that was actually in America already Martin Luther King and all these other, the riots, right, the racial segregation so that they treat me. Well, I just thought, well, they're either gonna lock me up or they're not gonna lock me up, right. And I didn't send it to the cops, I sent it to the Constitutional Law Committee of the National Assembly. I just didn't know... Well, then I received a letter from the chairman of the Constitutional Law Committee, Dr Holub, saying that they had received my complaint and that this complaint would be processed and that I would be informed of the outcome. Well, the only way the complaint was dealt with was that the Constitutional Law Committee of the National Assembly passed it on to the police. And then about a week later I got a summons to Bartholomejska street, which was never nice and good either. So I said, well, now I have to take a toothbrush, a towel, if they would leave me there for some time, but I went there."

  • "It always came from the ministry, from the administration that made exit permits and passports, that my travel abroad was rejected. There was a special law for that, I don't remember the number, but then there was a section where there were four things where they could refuse you an exit document. Namely, if you were under sentence, so you were in prison; if there was a criminal case against you, so you were not yet in prison and you were already in custody, for example; then if you had damaged the interests, or damaged the interests of Czechoslovakia or the reputation of the Czechoslovak Republic abroad or wherever, if you said something was wrong here, they could sweep you away too; and the fourth one was the most interesting: if the applicant's journey was not in accordance with the state interests, or anything could be put on it. That was such a, very broad term. And that broad term was always put on me."

  • "I had a very political background because my father was a tradesman. He had a private grocery store until the year fifty-seven. Just like you have the Vietnamese today, the little shops, it was something like that, it was called a colonial. Because I don't know where it got the name, but I guess when you imported goods from the colonies, it was mostly things that weren't here, coffee and cocoa and different spices and I don't know what all kinds of things... So it was called colonial. Well, that's what my father used to run. So I didn't have a worker-peasant background. Plus my younger brother, who I shared a name with, ran away to West Germany. My older brother, from my first marriage, he was in England. My brother-in-law, he was my eldest sister's husband again, he lived in Italy. And my cousin, my father's sister's son, he fled to France. Of course, all of them without the permission of the Czechoslovak authorities, as it was defined at that time. So I had a very 'good' record, I would have gotten into the mines at most, but that would have been about it."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 11.04.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:03:54
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I always got a letter saying that the applicant‘s trip was not in line with the state‘s interests

Václav Šašek
Václav Šašek
zdroj: archive of a witness

Václav Šašek was born on 2 November 1935 in Prague. His father ran a shop, some of his relatives emigrated and lived abroad. After the war, he was a member of a scout unit for three years. All this was reflected in his background report. Despite this, he was eventually able to graduate from an industrial school. In 1968 he travelled abroad for the first time, to visit his brother-in-law in Italy. There he also lived through 21st August. He subsequently applied for permission to travel several more times, but without success. Finally, he wrote a complaint to the Constitutional and Legal Committee of the National Assembly, after which he was summoned to State Security (StB) office in Bartolomějská Street. However, the interrogation had no serious consequences. In 1987 he was able to visit his brother in America. He made his living as an electrical engineer. He and his wife, whom he married in 1973, raised a daughter and a son. In 2023 he was living in Prague.