Milan Zapadlo

* 1957

  • "And he just told me another thing. He said, 'Look, when I was laying there on the ground, I saw a bus coming, so that driver must have seen what was going on in that street.' And me again, me being a worker in a power plant, so I had known auto mechanics who trained with me and they were the drivers. I found out who the driver of the bus was and I found out that he was a friend from the school days. So I found him, we met and I said to him: 'Please, I would like confirmation from you as to what you actually saw.' And he said: 'Unfortunately, you're late. They were already here. I signed a statement that I didn't see anything. That is a pity, I already signed it.'"

  • "Well, we got information in Prague about a lady whose husband posted the Charter 77 statement here on a public billboard on Fügnerka. And they caught him doing it and he was sentenced to about five years in prison I think. And this lady was with her children without any financial support. So in Prague they asked us, if we would give her some money. I went to Jirka Dienstbier asking for the money; Jirka Kasal was also there. And then, when we came back, it was the first time what did I see the foreign currency, the money. And then we visited this lady because she got a warning from the state police that if she said anything, the children would get killed. So she was very scared and we waited until dark. We told her they just went to knock on the window, and when we handed her the money, as we didn't know if she was being watched. I don't remember her name anymore."

  • "Then I still remember Jan Palach. When he burned himself, all the sirens in the entire state were turned on, cars stopped, everyone pressing their car horns. We were standing in the classroom, I was the only one crying, the teacher stroked my head. And I felt terribly sorry that such a young person could do something like that only to wake up the whole nation."

  • "And it was interesting - they noticed that the public lighting was turned off. Well, suddenly a couple of young men rushed out of the darkness and just started beating them. They threw Tudor over the railing into the Kateřinský brook, and they kicked Jirka Kasal in such a way that they actually broke his rib. And he somehow, I don't remember the exact details, but somehow he got home, they called an ambulance, which took him to the hospital. But before the treatment took place, the police were already there and said that they were going to take this man in for questioning, that they must find out, what was actually going on. The doctor somehow objected: 'Look, I'm a doctor and I have to treat him first.' They said to him: 'You will not tell us what we can and cannot do!' So they put him in a car, took him to Pastýřská for questioning and then kicked him out on the street and told him to go to the hospital himself."

  • "Early in the morning, my mother woke us up, crying and saying that they are occupying us, that the Russians are occupying us. And now we didn't know - I actually hardly knew the word. The image of the Russians that we used to paint with a red star at school; those tanks, blooming lilacs, and suddenly all this."

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    Liberec, 24.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:40:22
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After the Charter, it suddenly all made sense here

Milan Zapadlo at the age of 18, Liberec, 1975
Milan Zapadlo at the age of 18, Liberec, 1975
zdroj: archiv Milana Zapadlo

Milan Zapadlo was born on July 31, 1957 in Liberec. He trained at Severočeské energetické závody, then worked as a laborer and contractor. He was significantly shaped by the experience of the Soviet occupation in Liberec in August 1968, and he also sensitively perceived the death of Jan Palach. At the age of 17, he tried to commit suicide in the hopeless situation of the beginning of normalization. As an ardent music fan, he tried to organize discos in Liberec, mostly disguised as birthday parties. In 1977, he signed the Charter 77 declaration and became close to the environment of dissent and the underground. He participated in the distribution of samizdat between Prague and Liberec. However, he faced pressure from the state police because of this and was forced to emigrate in 1979 as part of the Asanace action. He travelled to Austria, then lived in Germany, where he joined the followers of the Osho sect. After the breakup of the sect, he went to Belgium, the Netherlands and finally to Australia. He obtained triple citizenship - Austrian, Australian and Czech. He returned to his homeland to take care of his aging parents. He became the holder of a certificate of resistance and resistance against communism. At the time of filming the interview (2019), he lived in Liberec and ran a private business.