I wouldn‘t want anything like this to ever come back
Jan Dittrich was born on 16 December 1943 in Vlachovice nad Vlárou into the family of Bohumil Jan Dittrich, an evangelical priest. He grew up together with three other siblings. One of his sisters is Rút Kolínská, the founder of the mother´s centres [mother and baby groups] movement after the Velvet Revolution and the first president of the Network of Mother‘s Centres in the Czech Republic. In 1947 witness´ father went to Texas, USA, for an internship, where he was offered a permanent job. However, the family did not manage to join him, because the coup of February 1948 came. His father returned home and began working as a parish priest in Chomutov. However, a State Security agent infiltrated the local congregation. On the basis of the trap the agent had prepared, Jan‘s father and other members of the congregation were arrested. For lack of evidence, Bohumil Jan Dittrich was eventually released. Until his death, State Security kept him under surveillance. Jan, like his siblings, later faced difficulties with admission to university, and until the Velvet Revolution he had troubles due to his bad background references. In 2023 he was living in Brno.