Libor Zavoral

* 1956

  • "I saw, for example, that there were cordons of reserve police officers in case something happened, so that they could rush in on those people and so on, I saw that there. Nothing like that happened there. Only I know, it was after the revolution, there was a big gathering at the ice rink in Teplice. It doesn't stand anymore. A man came there, took a microphone and said that he was going to report on what happened on Friday 17 November on Národní třída in Prague. This was on Monday, 20 November. At that time, information did not spread quickly, the television did not report on what happened on Friday in Prague. I only saw it on Monday, on CNN footage, when I was in Prague at the ČTK newsroom. When the boy started talking, describing what was happening there, they turned off his microphone. They said it was a microphone malfunction, but it was definitely not a malfunction. They just cut him off and that was it."

  • "During the period when I was already working at ČTK, I got into my car at Stříbrníky and drove down to work, to the ČTK editorial office. It was beautiful up there and the air was clear. Down in Mírové náměstí there was fog and smell. Sometimes I would catch my breath down in the centre and sometimes I wanted to vomit. I don't say that to harm Ústí nad Labem. Really, the air was so bad that it made me want to vomit. That was the 1980s."

  • "In 1976 and 1977, I was the chief of the posting station. That's where, of course, the soldiers received letters and postcards from abroad. And a couple of times I was visited by a person, from counterintelligence or whatever they were called, even the professional soldiers were afraid of them. And this person asked me if the soldiers had any letters from abroad and so on. I said that occasionally something would come, but not much. And he wanted me to call them when one came and give it to them. I didn't like that very much. He didn't formally require cooperation, but he actually required it. But I took it the other way around. When letters like that came in, I would put them in my jacket breast pocket, take them to the guys, and warn the soldiers to tell the people who were writing to them not to send them anything else because the military counterintelligence was interested."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ústí nad Labem, 01.03.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:03:51
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - Ústecký kraj
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

He photographed the Pluto mine disaster, dictators and Havel and Clinton for Czech News Agency

Libor Zavoral, 1980s
Libor Zavoral, 1980s
zdroj: pamětník

Libor Zavoral was born on 29 November in Most. His father was the first cameraman of Czechoslovak Television in the newly established studio in Ústí nad Labem. The establishment of the regional editorial office of Czechoslovak Television was also the reason why the family moved from Most to the regional town in 1963. From an early age, the witness was interested in photography. Already at the age of fourteen his first photograph was published in the regional newspaper Průboj. After studying at the grammar school in Ústí nad Labem in 1976, Libor Zavoral joined military service at the airport in Planá near České Budějovice. He was assigned to receive and redistribute mail. There he was also contacted by members of the military counterintelligence. They asked him to deliver letters for soldiers arriving from non-socialist countries. He refused to do so. Immediately after the service Libor Zavoral joined the Czech News Agency, first in the laboratories in Prague and later in the regional editorial office in Ústí nad Labem as a photojournalist. According to his own words, he had to join the Communist Party in the mid-1980s. The reason was to participate in party events because of work. He was never interested in politics himself. He took joining the party for granted in order to do his job. As a photojournalist, he took part in a government delegation to North Korea. There, he was also in close proximity to North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. In the 1990s, he travelled abroad more frequently for work, for example to the NATO summit in Washington in 1999. The witness retired in 2017. In March 2023, he was living in Ústí nad Labem.