Vladimír Zamazal

* 1947

  • "As I mentioned, when students were kicked out of universities and we were kicked out of the tourism section and from ČSTV, of course it didn't stop there. Grown people have continued to have jobs, and mine has continued to have jobs. At that time, I was teaching professional subjects at the vocational school and electro-technical industrial college in Lanškroun. I was expelled from there; I could tutor the last year, that is, the year I had started, and I had to leave. I asked if I could be employed as a master at the academy. That was out of the question because I have a very negative influence on the youth."

  • “It wasn't until 1952, I didn't know it was 1952 yet, I was five years old, when a jeep stopped on our street. I was happy about it, because seeing a car on the street was quite an oddity. However, it was not so joyful, because members of the State Security jumped out of the car, searched our barracks and told my mother that my father had been arrested. Of course, the mother herself did not know why he was arrested, and I think that those who searched our apartment did not really know either, because the searches took place several times in a row. For example, one day they searched the whole lot and came the next day and suddenly found some anti-regime leaflets in the old garrisons. Father told us later that he never had any leaflets in the garrisons. They were looking for some kind of reason that they could add to what they already knew about him or what they had imprisoned him for. At the time, political prisoners were required by law to move out of their apartment or dwelling, and all their possessions were confiscated unless the family could prove that they had clearly not bought the piece of furniture themselves. The mother managed to prove that, for example, she herself received the sewing machine as a wedding gift.”

  • “One time this whole group went to the German Democratic Republic and there they arranged with some pastor in the church that they could play guitars and sing in the church, which they did. They sang there, they played, there were some locals who applauded them. Of course, there was a bus driver, who was directly deployed to monitor how this tourist organization behaves on its tours. What happened was that they began to take individual people from this community for questioning. Gradually, the entire section was abolished. As a warning, some were expelled from the tourist section and from ČSTV, among them were myself, my brother-in-law, Dr. (Zdeněk) Stráník and his wife, and five students who were studying at the university at the time.”

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Who ever tasted what it is like to be on stage, such experience stays with him for the rest of his life

Vladimír Zamazal v dětství
Vladimír Zamazal v dětství
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Vladimír Zamazal was born on June 25, 1947 in Pardubice. As a small boy, he experienced when members of the StB searched their house in 1952, his father Vladimír was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison in connection with his work for the physics laboratory. The family then moved to Letohrad. The witness and his sisters had trouble getting into high school, but in the end he even managed to graduate from the electrical engineering college in Brno. At the end of the 1960s, he became the secretary of the renewed scout group in Letohrad. In the August days of 1968, the detachment engaged in non-violent resistance against the Soviet occupiers, writing messages on the roads and turning signs. In the church in Orlic near Letohrad, he founded so-called rhythmic masses for youth, where they sang and played guitars. When his former scout group, already under the banner of a tourist group, went to the GDR in the 1970s and sang in a church there, which was not without consequences. He got expelled from the Czechoslovak Association of Physical Education and Sport (ČSTV) and also had to leave his job as a teacher professional subjects at the school in Lanškroun. He devoted his whole life to amateur theatre, acting, singing and directing. After the incident in the GDR, however, he was banned from public activity even in the artistic sphere. At the end of the 1980s, he worked as a technician in the cultural centre in Ústí nad Orlicí, where he was caught up in the velvet revolution in 1989. He helped organize public meetings both in Ústí nad Orlicí and in the neighbourhood.