Milič Šimáně

* 1954

  • "Even after three days, when I could only say 'Ja und Nein', I was repairing a car, because all the mechanics were on vacation. They didn't finish one car there, which had its head removed from Opel. I was supposed to mount the head back with the valves, put the wiring, adjust it and so on. It was perhaps the worst day of my life. There was a Bosch machine to adjust it. I've never seen anything like it in my life. There was nothing like that in the Czech Republic. So, I made two wires, a light bulb, an advance control light. I was listening to the engine with my ear and spun with the distributor as it would run the best at that speed, tightened the bolt, and that's how I went to drive it. So, it worked, but it was terrible, terrible, terrible."

  • "My father was not allowed to work as a teacher, he had to work on construction sites or later in a brick factory. Our whole family was depressed by the environment in which he ended up. He had no one to talk to there. There were day laborers, gypsies or criminals in the brickyard. It was hard there. The last year of his life was really sad because of this environment. People avoided us like we were dirty. They crossed to the other side of the street when they saw us. My friends also told me that they were not allowed to visit us. They were either afraid or their fathers forbade them to do so. It wasn't that simple. So, no communists. They must not cross my threshold."

  • "We had summer camps in Potštejn and sometimes he had two or three rounds in a row, so we were in nature for two months. You haven't had a proper shower in two months. He came home dirty, and finally a bath and hot water. So beautiful childhood, beautiful youth, perfect. My father was very tolerant. I probably gave him hard time when I was a teenager. He handled it brilliantly. So he is missed here. We still miss him and it's a pity that it turned out like this."

  • "Regarding Dubečno, as they nationalized it there. My grandmother had an uncle Vašek, who loved horses. I was small and I only know it from the storytelling. As they took his horses, the farm away, and all that, he committed suicide. It was a catholic village and he was not allowed to be buried in the cemetery in the family tomb, but somewhere near the wall. Every time we go there on the All Saints´ day in the autumn, one experiences it.”

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Always with a clean state, do not give up and do not betray

Milič Šimáně was born on December 14, 1954 in Náchod. His father Jiří Šimáně, nicknamed Šíp, took part in the post-war reconstruction of Junák (a czech Scout unit) in Náchod, and in 1947, at the age of nineteen, he allegedly became the youngest district commander of Junák in Czechoslovakia. After the start of the communist regime, he and his wife Vlasta were persecuted and could not practice their teaching professions. Their children, Milič and Dagmar, then had difficulty admitting to study. They did not allow their parents to return to education until 1960, when they entered the Hořičky Elementary School for the Deaf. After the restoration of Junák in 1968, his father again became the district commander and Milič Šimáně became the advisor of the first division. With the arrival of normalization, not only was the scout disbanded again, but the father again had to leave his teaching profession, work in a working-class position and, as an enemy person, find himself in the State Security search. On the morning of November 11, 1975, Jiří Šimáně was found dead at his workplace in a brick factory in Miskolezy near Česká Skalice. His death is still shrouded in strange circumstances. Milič Šimáně also tried to resist the regime and a few years after Česká Skalice he secretly distributed information leaflets and also sabotaged the production in the national company MILETA in Hořice. Finally, in 1982, he emigrated with his wife and his daughter to the Federal Republic of Germany. He came to Czechoslovakia again after the fall of the communist regime in 1990. He got married for the second time and stayed in Germany. In May 2013, he participated in the ceremonial unveiling of his father‘s monument at the Municipal Office in Česká Skalice, organized by the Jiří Šimán Šíp Youth Center.