Václav Žufan

* 1960

  • "In Klatovy, I was lying down nicely four days before the twenty-first [August 1988], my mother came to say that there were two policemen, that they needed this... uniforms. Okay, so we're going. They took me to the rozzers, and the director of the State Security was already there, not Duchač, the other one, Kučera. I wonder what's wrong. And now he was holding some paper, they dictated it to him on the phone. And according to this and that paragraph, you are suspected of rioting in Wenceslas Square in four days. I was looking at him to see if I was imagining things. I said: 'So I'm suspected of rioting in four days?! We're in Klatovy - and in four days I'll be rioting?!' And he read it to me again, so I said: 'What now?' And they had already got the red papers, the detention papers. After all I signed a paper in Prague that I would be calm. You know they took me into custody. I didn't have anything, but because Klatovy, I needed to talk to my girlfriend and another guy. They brought me a carton of cigarettes, they let me have it all, clear sailing. So, they tied me up and again read me some regulations about what I could and couldn't do during the escort, and that otherwise they would shoot. They took me, tied up, to the car with the cigarettes and everything, sat me down, and we drove off. He turned around, unlocked my handcuffs, gave me an apple and we started talking. I wondered what it was. And they said it came from Prague. Now, where are they taking me, I thought it was to Bory. We drove past Bory, so I thought it was to Prague. Rubbish, then suddenly we turned to Vary and they took me to Ostrov nad Ohří."

  • "One of my friends and I, when we were sixteen, made a bet that who will join the Communist Party… just that if we were given millions or ten crowns, we wouldn't join the Communist Party. But we made that bet. Just such a goal that it was actually the purpose of my life, that communism would fall. A terribly secret wish, that's what I... it was there, but it wasn't really thought of, because I saw everywhere here that it was forever. Everywhere it was forever. I couldn't even imagine that it would fall. It was just impossible. Then when it fell, that was the end of life for me. Never again, there just won't be a bigger dream."

  • "First I was at an industrial college where I finished two years. I didn't enjoy it and went straight into apprenticeship, straight into second year, where I did two years and, bye, Klatovy. Actually, by the time I took the last final exams, there were already big problems, I had long hair. They wanted me to cut my hair. I was apprenticing at the Škoda factory, my father was a shop foreman at Škoda, so it was completely crazy for my father that everybody got their hair cut - and I was the only one who didn't. I said I wouldn't get a haircut. And they were like, I'm not going to the final test. I didn't care, I didn't care at all. In the end, of course, I passed the test, and that very day I just came home and went to the festival in Beroun, where I stayed for two days. By then I was like, I'm out of here. After the holidays, I didn't come back home. Then I even found out that my father was going to the military administration somewhere, asking them not to give me a deferment, to take me to the army. That was bad, we had a fight. Their dreams were dashed, and I started doing whatever I wanted. And that's what I've been doing to this day, actually."

  • “I was supposed to have a speech in Sušice at the monument, it was October 28th, it was a month before that [Velvet Revolution – editor´s note]. They already picked everyone around me and taken to jail and nobody said where I was. And I had to go to Sušice to get myself locked up. It was clear they would take me. I knew they would be in Klatovy at the station and at the bus stop. Then I remembered that there was one more stop, Klatovy Luby, and they certainly wouldn't be there. So I went around the whole thing, got on the train, I went through the whole train, which was full of demonstrators. I met a mother there who was already a communist. I came to Sušice, peeked out of the train and I see one crazy man next to the other, but not one from the back of the train, so I got out from behind. I just walked around Sušice quite still, because I knew them, these Klatovy pipes. Well, I came to the monument and there was just such a circle and they immediately picked me up and took me to the interrogation. There was a young man, I think his name was Pandrle, and an old Kučera who had been in charge of me for about ten years. Now that Pandrle was starting to put some papers in there for a questioning. Now we look at him with Kucera and he says, 'What are you doing? Mr. Žufan never says anything!'”

  • “For me, there was a demonstration where ten of us went and packed all of us. They packed us back home, not that they packed us there. I just got the bombs there, but again so no one could see it. But I immediately went to complain. Two state security policemen went towards me and punched me in my stomach, and in the face, then they went on, just like that. They picked up Placák and took him somewhere in the woods.”

  • “Sometime in the 1989 prior to the anniversary of August, I was invited again for interrogation to Barťák. No, they didn't invite me, they actually came to work for me and took me to Barťák. There they gave me signed the statement that the week before that [anniversary of the August invasion, note. ed.] I will disappear from Prague. I went to Klatovy thinking that it will be quiet. And they came for me in Klatovy. So the Klatovy state security took me to the interrogation, but they were the types of uncles. They knew my dad. I asked them what I was actually picked up for. Now he took a paper out of his pocket, so he read to me according to this and this paragraph that in four days I would be making disturbances on Wenceslas Square. I looked at him in amazement… fair enough. They wanted to take me to custody. They gave me handcuffs and brought me to the car, where they took my handcuffs off again and gave me an apple, total comfort. I was taken to Ostrov nad Ohří, Bory did not take me in. I was there for two days. And again those Klatovy uncles came for me. They came to a cell in Vitman's and arrested me in a cell. I haven't even been released yet and I was arrested in the cell because forty-eight hours had passed and I was arrested in the cell and taken me to Pankrac.”

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The eternal revolutionary

Václav Žufan during the period of underground in Klatovy in 1980
Václav Žufan during the period of underground in Klatovy in 1980
zdroj: archiv VŽ

Václav Žufan was born on July 12, 1960 in Klatovy, where he also attended elementary school. Subsequently, he chose a secondary technical school, which involved two years of training in the Klatovy Skoda Works. Then Vaclav moved to Melnik, where he worked on the construction of youth, and thus avoided recruitment to military service. After years in Mělník, he moved to Prague between 1981 and 1982. At that time he signed Charter 77 with the Černeg brothers in Sušice. Václav Žufan was in charge of a signaling book in those years, his personal name was established only in 1987, when he participated in printing samizdatas such as Information on Charter 77 or Lidové noviny. In addition, he also published his own magazines 10 Years Flexi Disc and Attack on punk subculture. Until 1989 he underwent dozens of interrogations. In 2018 he received the certificate of the participant of the third resistance. In 2019 he lived in Prague.