Miroslav Urban

* 1956

  • “We agreed that we were going to the square, that we would not leave the students alone. It was around 21 November. There were a handful of us, about six people. What was it? An embarrassment. The square was empty. Once we walked around the square with candles and suddenly a group of young people left the Jelen restaurant. They sat there drinking beer and saw us through the glass. And they joined us. We were lucky. They were the guys from the Society of Friends of the USA who knew what was going on. One of them even had a Czechoslovak flag, so he spread it out. We were a total of fifteen together. After we did one more round, a police car began driving behind us. But we were not afraid.”

  • “Although the number of people in the square was growing every day, there were still more people under the arcade. We have a beautiful square with an arcade on all four sides. And there stood more people than we were demonstrating. People were still afraid, no one knew how it would turn out, what it would be like. And under the arcade they were just spectators of the event, who could not be locked up. I remember that we began to shout, 'Whoever stands on the sidewalk does not build a republic.' But we were afraid how the general strike was going. Will people come? Will they stop being scared? Will the company employees attend it?”

  • “The general strike, which started at noon, was suddenly attended by people with banners. Czechoslovak tobacco industry, Autopal, Tonak, huge mass of people. The square was almost full. We were very pleased that people came, that it was not a shame, that they stopped worrying and came to support students, democracy, free elections, freedom of faith. It was a wonderful positive thing.”

  • “I went to religion class at Tyrš school and there was the headmaster, Mr. Bartoš, a great Bolshevik. At school I tried my best and went out very well with the headmaster and the teachers. I was a good kid, I was not naughty. And if I brought home a C grade, my father would have beaten me for that. That couldn't be. I remember that Mr. Bartoš invited my parents to visit him at school and explained that if I went to religion, he would never sign my application for college and he urged my parents that they would change their minds. They clearly told him that I would go to religion no matter the circumstances. So of course I had a problem getting to any higher school. My sister, who attended Palacký primary school, had a similar experience.”

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Let‘s fight for the truth. A lie is the ground of all evil.

Miroslav Urban in 1983
Miroslav Urban in 1983
zdroj: Archiv Miroslava Urbana

Miroslav Urban was born on May 24, 1956 in Nový Jičín. The parents were religious Catholics. Her father worked as a repairman of electrical appliances, her mother sewed for communal services and then cleaned up at school. His great-uncle, a Catholic priest Alois Urban, was imprisoned by the communist regime. The family met with other persecuted priests. Because of his religious beliefs, he did not receive referrals to high school studies. He apprenticed telex and for over thirty years repaired telexes in Nový Jičín district. In 1985 he participated in a pilgrimage in Velehrad, which grew into a demonstration against the totalitarian regime. He was a signatory of the petition of Moravian Catholics for religious freedom and distributed the manifestation called ´Several sentences´. In November 1989 he was among the first to support the student strike in Nový Jičín. He initiated the founding of the Civic Forum and organized anti-government demonstrations. In 1990 he became the chairman of the People‘s Party in Nový Jičín and worked as the town councillor. In 1998, he left the KDU-ČSL due to the candidacy of a former state policeman in Bílovec. In 2005 he returned to the management of the organization in Nový Jičín. Three years later, the Christian Democrats from Nový Jičín created the coalition with the Communists, and he left the party for good. In 2019 he co-organized demonstrations in Nový Jičín against the government of Andrej Babiš.