Jiří Spáčilík

* 1962

  • "What is interesting, in Minkovice there was really a very hard regime, so there were marches outside, there were roll calls in different formations, there were roll calls for meals in formations, so the medical examination was a chapter in itself, because really, with any illness or injury, you had to be naked all the time. So the nurse who required that, she was called 'The Dick Princess'. In Minkovice one was so often naked that one didn't think it was anything special. Whoever they wanted to punish, just because he was disgusted, went to the body search, which means that after his shift, instead of taking food and going to the house, he went to the cinema, where we had to stand in a line, everyone had to strip naked, and then we'd go in front of the screen, and then we'd have to squat down or put our hands up, show our hands that we had nothing in our hands, squat down, turn around, and then we could go, and then we could get dressed. If they were really bad, the cops, they'd throw things around... even the pots messed up with the dirty clothes and everything. When there was a big body search in Minkovice, the rooms had sixteen people and they managed to pile everything that was in the room, which means mattresses, sheets, towels, pyjamas and everything that was in the lockers... they piled it up, sprinkled it with tobacco, sugar and salt."

  • "The first ones, in the detention cell, they were just normal guys who had done something stupid, sometimes they were, they were more like these people who belonged in a madhouse, and in the big room, there were already some of them who were so seasoned that they had been locked up maybe five or ten times, but they, on the other hand, knew how to do it, so I'll be honest, it was... something wonderful and delightful was having a bath once every ten days. Once every ten days! Now imagine that there were somewhere thirteen or fifteen people herded under three showers and the guard was banging on the door telling us to get out, and the one knew that the guard, just the one who had the keys to the door, that he had homosexual tendencies. So he justshowed him his ass and the guard kept shouting, but he let us stay maybe five minutes longer. You wouldn't believe this is possible, and he was just so experienced because the drugs had to be on the door. So they deliberately made some sort of a mess when it was going for a bath, so they looked to see where the drugs were, and when we were coming out of the bathroom they just... one made a mess at the back and he stole them and took them. And once it was in the room, they were just wondering what to do with it."

  • "I know that there was a policeman named Štajner who persecuted Jehovah's Witnesses in Olomouc, and he was such a bad man that he basically focused on the weakest people, so he summoned a seventy-five-year-old grandmother, who was originally German, who had never learned Czech properly in her whole life, she had a bad heart and everything, and he tortured her in the interrogation until she fainted. Or maybe he just picked on my mum, who was raising four kids by herself, and he was such a guy, he came in on Sunday morning to check if she had cleaned up, because he wanted to take the kids away from her. That was the style they tried to pursue people."

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Being a prisoner of conscience for five years

Jiří Spáčilík in 1988
Jiří Spáčilík in 1988
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Jiří Spáčilík was born on 5 April 1962 in the Olomouc maternity hospital into the family of Josefa and Vincenc Spáčilík. His father was a private farmer until 1979. It was not easy for him. Already during the 1950s the family lost their breeding stock - prime breeding bulls that ended up in slaughterhouses. The second time, the Spáčilíks lost almost everything when the communist regime confiscated their fields at the end of the 1970s. Jiří grew up in Tučapy in South Moravia, later the family moved to Dub nad Moravou, where he also finished primary school. He then trained as a bricklayer. Because he refused to join the communist party, he was not allowed to complete his follow-up studies and graduate. In the early 1980s, Jiří Spáčilík met Jehovah‘s Witnesses, who led him to faith and Bible study. On the basis of these lessons and knowledge, he refused to accept the draft notice for basic military service in 1981. He was arrested the same day and later sentenced to twenty months imprisonment. He served them in Bělušice. This was at a time when Jehovists were being arrested and imprisoned in the whole republic. In the Bělušice prison, he met several fellow Jehovah‘s Witnesses and together they practiced the Memorial Feast - the only holiday that Jehovah‘s Witnesses recognize - which is the commemoration of Jesus‘ Last Supper with the Apostles. After his release, Jiří Spáčilík returned to his job, but the following year he was called to military service again. This time he refused again and was sentenced to three years in prison. He served his entire sentence in one of the worst prisons, notorious for its brutality and inhumane conditions - in Minkovice, where many other prisoners of conscience, including Petr Cibulka and Jiří Gruntorád, went through. After the Velvet Revolution, he married his colleague in faith Małgorzata, with whom they raised their daughter Martina. Thanks to his profession as a bricklayer and builder, he helped to build several Jehovah‘s Witness prayer houses. Jiří Spáčilík was living in Újezd near Uničov at the time of the interview.