Ing. Ivan Vrána

* 1947

  • "November 17th, that's when my wife and I met at the Albert Square without agreeing on it, it was such a coincidence, that's where we met. So we made our way to Vyšehrad and from Vyšehrad down to the embankment - you know that from television - to the National Theatre and then to Národní třída. And because my wife was a bit sloppy with documents, she hadn't registered her permanent residence at the place where we lived, but still originally at her parents' place. They lived in Vojtěšská, which is a short walk from Národní třída. When the cops started going through the place, we both had to prove our identity. They saw that we had Vojtěšská there, so they let us go down Mikolandská Street before they started to beat up the students. So we narrowly escaped that."

  • "He was convicted of sedition against the republic. And sometimes it feels like something out of the Black Barons. Then when we heard that, we heard that somewhere in the station they were reloading planks onto a car, and now a train was going through carrying some tanks. And when it came through, Dad was supposed to ask these guys how many tanks there were. The guys said, 'We don't know,' and he told them about eight or however many there were. And he told them they'd be bad spies if they didn't know how many there were. And they condemned him for being a spy. It's laughable today. Unfortunately, he got the rest of his sentence served for that and two years added. He had eight years left - or a total of... in 1949, they sentenced him to eighteen years plus the two years, so he should have served twenty years, and he served eighteen years of that. Then they let him go home on amnesty only in 1968."

  • "It's not that I'm such a hero, but we didn't take part in some by-election under the communists and they did not want to accept our children into any kindergarten as a result of that. They said, 'You didn't vote for us, so you're not entitled to kindergarten.' I said, 'When did I not vote for you? Well, there were some by-elections, some comrade died and another comrade had to be elected in his place - and we forgot all about it and didn't go to the polls. And so they sweetened it for me. She was looking for - it was quite difficult on one salary in Prague - she was looking for a job. So she found it in the Masokombinat in Písnice, where they gave her a nursery for a girl at that time, because the older boy was already in school."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Hradec Králové, 20.11.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:07:52
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

When my dad came back from prison after 18 years, he was a stranger to me.

Ivan Vrána in 1961
Ivan Vrána in 1961
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Ivan Vrána was born on 3 December 1947 in Hradec Králové. His father Ivan (1914-2003) was a gendarme and his mother Zdeňka (1923-1984) was a housewife. His father was convicted for political reasons and imprisoned in 1950-1960 and 1961-1968, mostly in uranium mines in the Jáchymov and Příbram regions. Ivan grew up without his father. The family was moved to Kunvald near Žamberk. There, little Ivan had a difficult time in primary school, when he was subjected to ridicule as the son of a reactionary. In the ninth grade of elementary school, the committee forced him to sign to enter an agricultural apprenticeship, but he refused. When he entered the Naftové motory apprenticeship, which was outside the Ústí nad Orlicí district, he partly escaped the supervision of local Communist Party officials. After his apprenticeship as a wood modeller, he graduated from the mechanical engineering school and eventually from the Czech Technical University in Prague. In 1974 he married and with his wife Jolana (1955-2003) they had three children. The family lived in Prague and Ivan worked there in technical positions - e.g. at Technometra Radotín. He retired to Kunvald.