Ladislav Valeš

* 1950

  • "I had to enlist. But I said that I refuse it, that I will not make a fool of myself, that I will boycott the military basic service. I refused anything, I refused to march, I refused everything. I was getting pointless punishments. They immediately understood that there was no point in dealing with me. Either they put me in a psychiatric hospital, where I was also for a while, because I accepted everything they didn't like, as if it were some kind of adventure game. So when, as punishment, they made me wash the stairs from top to bottom in the barracks, I went, I put liquid soap on it, such a mess. I watered all the stairs, took a hose, poured it on the drain, on the pipe of the water supply and let the water flow there. There was a flood down there. Everyone came running to see what was going on. The commander was yelling at me asking about what was I doing. I said I couldn't look at it, I had to make the stairs completely white, I'd clean it up here. So he understood that I must be some kind of weird.'

  • "She at that time... Because when the Russians were with us, they were also in the village. Some people brought them food and so did my mom. We were so ashamed of it. My mom was convinced that the soldiers really came to liberate us, because she was out of the political scene, because we didn't have a TV at home, only a radio. As she was the old school type, communism meant only good things to her. She bought bread, hosted and cooked for them. There were Russians in our garden, I remember that. My father would pass out. When he came home from work and saw how the Ivans were eating in the garden, goulash from mom, he was completely mad. He always ran away to the forest. As children we were afraid of them and I hated them. For example, I stayed with a friend and didn't go home at all.''

  • "We've always been kind of rebels. We had a lot of different comments about the classification of some apprentices. Because some of them extended there, on the one hand, for example, because they had parents in the Communist Party, on the other hand, they were certain influential people like important doctors and all that. He deserved the worst grade and they gave him a three and forced us to approve it at the classification board. We always argued with that Luboš and said: 'He is completely useless. He has nothing to do here. He can't even climb a pole,' we said. 'What will he do there? What's the use of such an electrician?' We always protested against it, so we were the black sheep. We always somehow had a few transgressions.'

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Libochovice, 11.11.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:33:10
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I boycotted the war

a portrait photo of Ladislav Valeš
a portrait photo of Ladislav Valeš
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Ladislav Valeš was born on May 7, 1950 in the village of Nová Chřibská. From 1965 he studied at a secondary military school in Slovakia. After two years, thanks to a medical opinion, he left the school. At the school in Varnsdorf, he trained as an electrical fitter of distribution equipment. He experienced the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in Nová Chřibská. He wrote anti-occupation signs with his classmates. After completing his apprenticeship, he started working as an electrician at a distribution facility in Děčín. Later, he worked as a master of vocational training at the Varnsdorf school. He often objected to patronizing students from influential families. Since 1983, he has been engaged in amateur theater. He first played in the group Scéna Libochovice and later directed performances. After playing Watched Trains three times, including passages he was not allowed, he had to quit the ensemble. In 1986, he became one of the founders of the Rádobydivadlo Klapý theater group. He collaborated with ensembles in Louny, Lovosice, Česká Lípa and Dobronín. During the Velvet Revolution, he co-founded the Libochovice Civic Forum (OF). In 2022 he lived in Libochovice.