Ing. Jan Suchánek

* 1936

  • "The year 1968 came and it began. And then I thought: For someone to let go of the regime by himself is nonsense. On the contrary, he will use what he can. That's why I didn't join KAN (Club of Committed Non-Party Members) or a similar organization, but I joined the People's Party - gradually trying to dismantle the regime. I was a member of the People's Party, now I am not, since 1968. The occupation came. Airplanes and such. I worked as a metallurgist in a foundry. I just had my third, one-month-old baby. So I told the family that if anything, they should go to the basement. I went to the factory, I felt responsible for it. It was interesting to walk five kilometers among the army. The buses were not running. There was an uprising in the factory, the People's Militia wanted to take their weapons and go shoot the tanks. There was a big gathering around it, that's when I broke it. I had a longer speech, saying that no matter what we had to expect the occupation. Living in the occupation, that we will feed x tens or hundreds of thousands of people on top, but that we have to learn to live with them. To think that we are going to go with rifles and machine guns against an army whose tanks are driving one after the other, which has thousands of soldiers, we will just end up with a pile of dead people.”

  • "And then I got a scholarship to the bishop's secondary grammmar school, the Jesuit secondary grammar school in Bohosudovo near Teplice, now it's Krupka. It was a boarding grammar school - and I can say that I owe a large part of who I am to that school. Recently, the round anniversary of the K event was celebrated, when all male orders were liquidated. Imagine about a hundred boys from the 6th grade up. They wake you up at midnight. SNB (National Security Corps) in uniform, militia and civilian. They check you three times until the morning, always wake you up again and add up. That means from the bedroom to the dining room, in the dining room reading the list and back. At that time, I had a torn drawing in my pocket, because I got F, so I tore it up in anger. Two or three times a gentleman checked me, there were more of them, and they asked: 'What is this?' I was in the in the eighth grade, I was fourteen."

  • "During the war, the Germans wanted to take the caves for the war industry. The Kateřinská cave suited them the best, because there was no water there. But the first dome had fallen, there was a danger that it would continue to fall. In the second dome, where there were stalactites, it was planned. They wanted to dispose of it and build the production. I know that dad and other people modified the cave by filling in the passage into the stalactite cave. They rebuilt the passage through the Kateřinská cave and disposed of the maps and repainted them. So, through the war, only one dome was used, which was in danger of collapsing. The most interesting thing is that a German officer, administrator of Moravský kras, knew about this. I know that after the war he and his family were liquidated, killed, but not by the Germans. It was him who alerted my father to the production plan. Thanks to him, the cave was preserved. And thanks to him, at the end of the war, my father and other people hid a total of two villages in the abyss of Macocha from February 1945 until the end of the war. The Germans couldn't go there, it was enough to turn off the lights. It was the village of Vilémovice and one more."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Liberec, 30.01.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:14:37
  • 2

    Studio v Liberci, 07.07.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:10:45
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Dad came back from prison as a cripple. Bachers made a swing out of him

Jan Suchánek took part in a running competition organized by the Ostašov Foundry (1976)
Jan Suchánek took part in a running competition organized by the Ostašov Foundry (1976)
zdroj: archive of the witness

Jan Suchánek was born on May 21, 1936 in Brno. He spent his childhood up to the age of ten with his parents and siblings Josef, Pavel and Maria in Moravský Kras, where his father Jan Suchánek was the administrator. His father explored the cave. At the beginning of the Second World War, he disguised part of the Kateřinská cave and repainted the maps, the Nazis planned production in it. At the end of the war, his father, a member of the resistance, hid the inhabitants of two villages in a camouflaged section. They were threatened with execution for helping the partisans. The Red Army awarded him the Red Star. After the war, the family had to move from Moravský kras, they bought a house in Liberec after the deported Germans. His father was monitored by State Security as an active believer. In 1947, Jan Suchánek entered the Jesuit secondary grammar school in Bohosudovo, where he experienced the K event in 1950. A year later, the father spent three months in custody for helping the sisters from the Union Order of St. Ursula. He came back as a cripple. Jan Suchánek graduated in engineering at the University of Liberec. In 1959, he went to the military service for half a year, then joined the Ostašov Foundry as a foreman. State Security followed him, they interrogated him. The director of the foundry kept a protective hand over him, because Jan Suchánek had extraordinary work skills. Despite the unfavorable personnel profile, he held the position of metallurgist and developer, traveled to the West on business. On August 21, 1968, he convinced the People‘s Militia not to attack the occupiers with weapons. He left the foundry in 1992. He worked independently as a consultant in the field of metallurgy. He retired in 2009. He met his wife Zdeňka, née Trdlová in church. They got married in 1962 and had five children: Jan (1963), Zdislava (1964), Tereza (1968), Vít (1973) and Michael (1976). In 2022, he had nineteen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. He lived in Liberec.