Jaroslav Chnápko

* 1956

  • “I was a workers’ son and so I trained to be a locksmith in the chemical plants. Later I began to work there. It was a huge factory where employees were transported by buses. They were regular streets there, including traffic lights. I went there with a colleague and often there were gas leaks. The alarms had gone off, buses transported people who became sick. We walked by when a flock of sparrows flew above us, the birds falling down dead. My friend said: ‘This happens all the time here.’ He made a few steps and then the older colleague began fainting. I propped him up while someone ran by, shouting: ‘Hurry, move away, away!’ It all seemed quite normal to me.”

  • “They undertook several house searches, looking for a mimeograph because Víska served as the publishing place for Vokno magazine. There may have been a hundred people there but one of the rooms was sealed up with mattresses and the visitors had no idea that a magazine was being printed there. It was difficult to do it since every single page meant one turn of the handle. Vokno had thirty pages and there were up to three hundred copies being printed. It was a car full of Vokno magazines. We distributed the first issue throughout the country, calling it the great journey. I, Sylva, Čuňas and our Janička distributed the first issue. We were looking for contact addresses and content for the next issue. I think this is what Čuňas was then imprisoned for. But they weren’t able to prove him anything.”

  • “They arrived early in the morning. Probably it was on purpose so that I’d be sleepy and drowsy. The Gestapo also used such methods. But my dad calmed me down and so I was calm when they brought me with them. Whatever they asked about I replied I wouldn’t discuss it with them. Then they asked what I had for lunch. So I told them what I had for lunch. And then, when they interrogated someone else, they didn’t admit that I told them nothing. Instead, they would say: ‘We even know what he had for lunch.’ The aim was for the interrogated one to crack up and spill blab all of it out.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 26.09.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 01:56:10
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory of nations (in co-production with Czech television)
  • 2

    Praha, 30.11.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 46:44
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The sense of helplessness that we learnt to live with was the worst thing

Jaroslav  Chnápko in 2016
Jaroslav Chnápko in 2016
zdroj: audio recording

Jaroslav Chnápko was born on 10 March 1956 in Most. Both his parents worked as blue-collar workers. In 1973, he trained to be a locksmith at the vocational school of the Litvínov Chemical Works of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship. His mother Hermína, née Bajanová died of gas poisoning while working in the Chemical Works. Jaroslav was one of the North Bohemian dandies, he had long hair, wore jeans, and attended concerts of illegal music where the Public Security often intervened. In 1977, he signed Charter 77 after he returned from his military service. In the same year, he, and his friends from the group around Charter together bought a building in ruins in Nová Víska and they transformed it into one of the famous underground buildings. They lived community life there, organized cultural events there and built a free area there. Jaroslav, nicknamed “Šíma” or “Šimako” by his community, participated there in the printing and distribution of the samizdat magazine “Vokno”. Nová Víska used to be watched by State Security, house searches were carried out there and the police followed both organizers and visitors of events. Communist authorities expropriated the house in Nová Víska in 1981 and they imprisoned the editor-in-chief of the magazine “Vokno” František “Čuňas” Stárka and his other friends. The majority of former inhabitants of Víska emigrated. Jaroslav Chnápko and his wife-to-be Silvestra (née Lupertová) bought an old mill in Osvračín and they tried to continue in the same spirit. They farmed, organized concerts and meetings of friends. The state tried to expropriate the building as well, and a court case concerning the issue took place in the late 1980s. Finally, the farm in Osvračín was the last house that was expropriated in October 1989 under the laws of the 1950s. However, the Velvet Revolution prevented their eviction without any compensation. Jaroslav and his wife keep on living in Osvračín, they run Vokno Gallery and they organize various social events.