„The arrival of the [Warsaw Pact] armies, that was on the table all the time. Because at school, there were all sorts of checks and interviews and they obviously wanted us to join them in the moral mud – what do we think about the Warsaw Pact armies. I remember when I sat in front of the committee, and because I was not that dumb, so I found a way: why should they question me when I could question them. So the dean, he was a Communist potentate first of all, his name was Bartek and he was one of that special sort of Commie functionaries who got their academic degrees for free. Graduates of the workers’ course, that’s how they called them. It would be good not to forget this because it’s an important thing. So, he sat there, he chaired the committee and he asked what did I think about the arrival of the [Warsaw Pact] armies. And I replied: ‘Well, you know, there are things happening in the world which are somewhat difficult to understand. I would like to ask you a question, are those Chinese Communists or not?’ Because at that time, those Communist parties were having a catfight among themselves. And I caught him unprepared [laughter]. Because he reacted in such a way, he told me: ‘Look, comrade, everyone has to sort it out in their head.’ And that’s how my debate about the entry of the armies ended. In other words, I did not say that I disagreed although it was apparent from my general attitude. So I was always in the danger of being kicked out of school.”
„My dad and my uncle dug out a shelter in the garden. And at the time when the war appeared in immediate vicinity, because we saw the railway going from Olomouc to Štěpánov and further towardds Prague, so, once we saw a hospital train, that’s what I need tos tate. And on a bridge in Benátky, a tank appeared, and it started fire at that hospital train, the train was German. And the tank was Russian. And out of sudden, on the bank of the creek, its name is Oskava, a group of Red Army soldiers appeared. So we hurried to that shelter in the garden and now, we experienced something I don’t like to recall. I saw how those fiery cartridges ended in those Russian tanks in that field. The tanks caught fire and those Russian soldiers started jumping out of them. Then we learned that the Germans had a guard post with binoculars on the church spire in Štěpánov and they had everything under control. So those are my war memories.”
„There was a celebration welcoming new students. It was somewhat like the May feast. And the welcome celebration meant a cortège and obviously those young people, and I was young as well, shouted all sorts of things, in that cortège. And when we returned back to the front of the school building, I walked upstairs and I saw one of those Communist political advisors, he worked in historical monuments care, his name was Josef Veselý, an architect, he had been the director of the Heritage institute before he started teaching. And based on those photographs, they would kick out the students [that participated]. That’s another facet of that atmosphere. The students in general acted freely and independently.”
Jaroslav Drápal was born on the 23rd of August in 1934 in Moravská Huzová (today’s Štěpánov) to Božena and Jaroslav Drápal. After the Munich crisis, the family had to leave their home in the Sudeten and they moved to Olomouc where Jaroslav started school in 1940. Jaroslav’s relative on father’s side was one Marie Gruzínová, a secretary of Bishop Gorazd; they helped to hide the instigators of the assasination of Reinhard Heydrich. Marie Gruzínová was executed in the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942. Towards the end of the war, the family moved to the Benátky neighbourhood in Moravská Huzová where they witnessed the liberation. After the war, Jaroslav studied at a Gymnasium in Olomouc (1945 – 1953) and then he studied architecture at the Brno University of Technology (1953 – 1959). After graduating, he was assigned to the Stavoprojekt company in Olomouc and from 1961 on, he worked as an assistant lecturer at the department of architecture at the Brno University of Technology. Knowing that it might endanger his career, after the August 1968 occupation, he refused to state his consent with theoccupation and despite pressure, he refused to join the Communist Party. Despite his views, he managed to stay at the university through the whole of normalisation. At the time of recording (2022), Jaroslav Drápal lived in Brno and taught his 61st year at the Brno University of Technology.
