Vojtěch Stříteský

* 1961

  • "From today's point of view, it was really very improvised, because probably the most modern means of communication was the telephone, landline, and fax. Of course, no cell phones, no internet, etc. But then again, we were all quite close to each other. When it was said: 'At three at Smetana's,' we were there, even if something was happening, I don't know what. We shared instructions. I think it was started by a few people who got to Prague. Whether it was me, whether it was Dr. František Zeman, Vlasta Žák with his wife Magda, Radek Kašpar, or Olda Hejl. Those of us who experienced the atmosphere of Prague suddenly started saying what needs to be done. Mirek Brýdl, who had excellent contacts in Prague, brought the first posters and Vojta Dostál from Smetana's house started painting the posters by hand: 'Come to Smetana tomorrow at six o'clock.' František Zeman had natural authority as a dentist, of course, and he was a personality. They always applied to him: 'I'm from such and such a university, I'd like to say something about this, the priest of the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren would like to speak on this topic, etc.' It was a free platform of opinions. We saw that many people were standing not at the monument, but in the lower halls, just watching us. Some even behind the windows, because they were afraid of how it would all turn out if the police suddenly came. They drove around us in cars, and there were a lot of undercovers, that is, the secret police, who wrote down what was happening, but they did not intervene, and certainly not by force, because they had orders not to go against us by force."

  • "On Saturday, November 18, around five o'clock, we were already at the buses, because that day the Film Club organized a trip to Prague to show banned films that we couldn't afford to bring to Litomyšl, because they would probably really shut us down. We occasionally screened a banned film, but somehow managed to cover it up. We had friends at the Hungarian Cultural Center who had some archival films about what the Communists were really like. We went to Prague and we already knew that something was happening, because a short article appeared in the morning's People's Democracy that students were beaten on the National Avenue and that Public Security had intervened with immense brutality. We came to Prague and it was a different city. Overnight, Prague changed and we were suddenly confronted with the participants of that demonstration. Specifically, a person from the Hungarian Cultural Center, Dr. Jenö Gál, who was a great friend of mine, he spoke Hungarian just like Czech, and vice versa; he showed us his back. We were sitting in the pub, he took off his coat and his back looked like a black pudding sausage as they were beating them all by the truncheons. He said he had never seen it before, that they were kicking lying girls in the head, dragging them by the hair on the ground. The operation was brutal, he was shaken by it. We told each other all this and the whole of Prague was already a little upside down. At that time, I stayed in Prague for another day, until Sunday. I was there with my wife and we had arranged with a friend from the war that we would sleep at his place and go to the cinema and the museum. In the end, we only went to the cinema, because otherwise we walked from the National Avenue in direction to the Wenceslas square and there were already thousands of people everywhere, everyone was exchanging information with everyone, and suddenly it was clear that it had started."

  • "In Litomyšl and in this region, in Litomyšl, it was quite common for people to go to church. There were more families like ours and they couldn't get along with us quite like they imagined. Rather, it had stupid consequences, for example, a sister who was clearly a teacher type could not go to study pedagogics, because it was forbidden. The class teacher said to my mother at the parents' association: 'I can't for the life of me sign her application for secondary school for teaching, it's impossible. You attend church regularly, and so do your children, and that is an excluded thing.' And when the brother was stationed in the army, he was given the worst possible training, because in his papers, in the report, it was written that he was a religious fanatic. It was absurd and senseless, because we were a family like any other and religious fanaticism was out of the question. In short and well, those in power, the communists and their structures, were able to find deep places where it hurts you as an individual, as a family, what others are allowed to do, and what you are not allowed to do."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    ZŠ T. G. Masaryka v Litomyšli, 27.03.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 58:22
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Masaryk‘s „not to be afraid and not to steal“, to be considerate of others and behave in such a way that one can look back on one‘s actions without blushing

Vojtěch Stříteský's speech on November 3, 1989
Vojtěch Stříteský's speech on November 3, 1989
zdroj: Soukromý archiv

Vojtěch Stříteský was born on September 30, 1961 in Litomyšl and comes from a family with nine children. They went to church, as was common in the Litomyšl region, and he was a minister from the age of five. Religion was later the reason why his sister could not study at a teacher training school and his brother was labeled a religious fanatic by the regime. He experienced the occupation in 1968 in his hometown, watching the arrival of tanks and armored cars with his whole family from the scaffolding on the house. He began to attend the high school graduation course waiter, but in 1979 he joined the newly opened conservatory in Pardubice, where he studied opera singing for six years. In 1982, he and his friend founded a successful Film Club, which showed a film every two weeks with an introduction by a lecturer. In 1989, he was an eyewitness in Prague and experienced the atmosphere there during the anti-regime protests. After returning home, together with others, he began to organize meetings at the monument of Bedřich Smetana. Seven people also founded the local Civic Forum. After the Velvet Revolution, he participated in municipal politics as a representative, councilor and deputy mayor. Since 1983, he has been involved in the founding of the Smetanova Litomyšl festival, and since 1992 he has been its artistic director and dramaturg. He likes music, movies and traveling.