Ing. Jan Zeťek

* 1944

  • “In my private life, I was in touch with people I knew from Zádveřice, and later, I got hold of some documents in which people with influence and good knowledge of the war period talked about the situation here in Vizovice area. I found out about the role of Merciful Brethren at the hospital and its senior consultant Lapeš, who saved people by hiding them at the hospital. For instance, I had a classmate, and her mother was hiding there because she was Jewish, and both the mother and my classmate were saved. František Lapeš was a great man who exercised a lot of influence. He spoke perfect German, and so he was able to negotiate with the German agents in their language. He got away with it. He didn’t die until 1961.”

  • “The peasants in the villages were obliged to hand over huge deliveries of their produce, massive levies. Now, my father had acquired a lot of knowledge about agriculture while he had been working at some cooperative farm in Polabí region where his uncle, Bohumil Hájek I believe, had been the director. And my father brought this know-how to Zádveřice. He became a reputable expert on cattle farming and crops production and these state-imposed levies, it was simply impossible to meet them, and so my father ended up in prison in Uherské Hradiště twice. That must have been sometimes between 1951 and 1954. And my mother was left alone with young kids. She was mostly coping, but we had a bad cow in the barn which wouldn’t let her milk her as she was used to my father. So let me mention a noble neighbour, his name was Jan Mikeska, born in 1907, who used to come and milk the wayward cow for us. Well, those were difficult times. And my father’s imprisonment, that was also for failure to deliver levies, the sentence was usually a few weeks. He didn’t stay away for a long time, but still he was dearly missed.”

  • “During the war, my father was involved in resistance movement in Chrudim region. I don’t know the full story, ‘cos he wasn’t in the habit of talking about himself. His father was a legionary who spent six years in Russia, spoke fluent Russian and didn’t come back to his homeland until 1921. Our house stood by itself on the bank of a stream which is a tributary of the Chrudimka river and two Russian POWs who had escaped from some German camp found refuge at ours. In the end, one local guy turned them in, but they managed to escape thanks to the nearby forest. Some fifteen years later one of them came to see my granddad and thanked him for the refuge during the war. As far as my father is concerned, I know that during some sabotage he managed to save his life by jumping into the overflowing Chrudimka and swimming to the other side. Later, when he had retired, my mother reproached him for not applying for the resistance fighters’ compensation which would have got him a bonus on top of his pension. And he lost his temper and said: ,Do you know who turned us in that time and reported the two Russians we were hiding? That very same comrade who did so is now some mayor or other powerful party official, and I should be asking him to testify for me?’ And so he refused to apply for the compensation.”

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    Vizovice, 30.08.2022

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    délka: 01:45:06
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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For the villages, collectivization meant poverty and starvation. It affected entire families, including children.

Jan Zeťek in 2022
Jan Zeťek in 2022
zdroj: Post Bellum

Jan Zeťek was born on June 23, 1944, in Pardubice, as the second child of Josef Zeťek and Lýdie Hurtová from Zádveřice. The family were devoted patriots. The patriotism originated from Jan Zeťek, the witness’ grandfather, who fought on the Russian front as a legionary during the First World War. While living in Zádveřice, the entire family were hit hard by collectivization, that is the forced joining of their private land with the collective farm. The witness’ father Josef Zeťek fought against it long and hard and ended up in prison in Uherské Hradiště twice. Finally, in 1958, he gave in and signed the land over. At school, Jan Zeťek was bullied for his “kulak” origin, his classmates tormented him and getting in a secondary school was extremely difficult. Eventually, he was accepted to a technical school in Gottwaldov, which he graduated from in 1962. Then he tried studying at a civil engineering faculty in Bratislava but had to leave for economic reasons in 1964. He managed to finish his studies in the 1980s and turned his attention to environmental studies and law, which were new areas of interest in his field at the time. In 1989, he supported the ideas of the Civic Forum, which he had adopted during his business trips to Prague. After the Velvet Revolution, he became an activist and was repeatedly offered to join various newly founded political parties. At the time of the shoot in 2022, Jan Zeťek was still publishing and managing the Historical Society which he and his wife had established.