Jan Vondráček

* 1966

  • “Now imagine that someone rings your doorbell and you let maybe two hundred people into that apartment. Because they knew otherwise could not protect them. So two hundred people just ran inside and were standing there, I have never seen it since; so many people standing in the hall. People crammed together very closely. In the back, they were already shouting out to open the windows, as they felt like suffocating in there, because actually suddenly they fill the apartment, over two hundred people in a four-room apartment, it was simply not designed for it. So, they started opening the windows. Well, we ran our and now it turned out exactly that roughly half of the house inhabitants opened the apartments unlike the other half, some grandmothers shouted at us that we were simply damned and sold out, as they knew it from the newspapers, right, and they didn't let go. Well, we ran all the way up to the attic.”

  • "For example, I remember a trip to Havlíčkův Brod, when at first some workers and the People's Militia from a factory wanted to fight with us, like don't let us there, that we are simply subversive elements and I don't know what else, because they were all stupidly manipulated. Well, then we somehow managed to get to the square, someone organized it there, so someone put equipment there. And that's what I remember at that time, that one was already in such a state of mind after that Friday that he actually stopped being afraid, even though it was not yet completely clear if it would turn back and if they would not close us all and we would simply end badly. Well, I remember how I told the story of what happened on November 17th in that square, and some guys in suits from the town hall just filmed and took pictures of me. I looked at them there and shouted at that square: 'Look over there, there's the State Security, so at least get ready and dress up if you're being photographed and filmed here and so on.' I made a joke of it. Of course, they started running because they were afraid that since the crowd was already angry, they might start lynching the State Security or something, which of course didn't happen."

  • “But it's true that when there were demonstrations like that before November 17, I was always unlucky, because I was leaving school and actually the demonstration started at four o'clock, that people would gather there in some way. It was always such a secret whisper gathering, as there were no social networks by then, now you can't imagine. It couldn't be convened like that, just secret phone calls and such. And because I had to be at school, for example, I got there an hour late, and the Wenceslas Square was already closed, and it was as if you couldn't get to participate in the demonstration, so I saved myself a cold shower in January from a water cannon or something, but like I wasn't there. And it was strange that I, as I failed about three times on the August 21 and so on, so I said: 'Once I'm in that cauldron, it's going to explode here.'' It is rather strange to have such premonition.”

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    Praha, 10.12.2021

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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November 17th was no time to fear, it was just a matter of surviving

as a child
as a child
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Jan Vondráček, film actor, voice actor and member of the Divadla v Dlouhá artistic ensemble, was born on August 16, 1966 in Prague-Libeň. With his father, a men‘s tailor and amateur actor, he often went to performances outside of Prague, and therefore grew up in a theatrical environment. However, he always hesitated between acting and music. Today he does both. After graduating from the four-grade high school, he joined the puppetry faculty at DAMU, which was transformed into the department of alternative and puppet theatre after the revolution. Jan was personally acquainted with Bishop Václav Malý and got into the environment of Charter 77, which could have been dangerous for him and his family. He experienced the massacre on Národní třída, during which he and his friends hid in the attic of one of the houses in Melantrichova Street. After this experience, Jan together with his classmates decided to declare an occupation strike. Until mid-January 1990, students slept in the premises of DAMU, pasted up protest leaflets around Prague and visited cities outside Prague, where they talked about what happened in the capital on November 17.