Jaroslav Frolík

* 1933

  • "I went to work and I met a guard near the RTC field, and she was all wide-eyed. There were plant guards at the time, wearing grey uniforms and staying at the gatehouses, checking to see if anybody was taking out any stolen items and just protecting that plant property. 'Mr. Frolík, just imagine - they're here. We've been taken by Russians!' I was a bit incredulous. I mean we could have seen it coming - we had just returned from a holiday in Bulgaria and there were some portents. The director had already gathered the management team, of which I was a member, and the director wasn't sure what to do and said we should contact the district committee of the Communist Party. I said, 'What for?' Meanwhile, I had already listened to what was going on, and I said, 'Well, we'll protest.' I offered to write a resolution. We had it copied and at two o'clock, when the shifts were changing, we presented it at the gatehouse for whoever to sign. Almost all the 1,200 employees of the textiles plant signed it."

  • "I was in the Communist Party. I hesitated to join; I was not offered membership and was hesitant. I read a lot of literature by those regime or pro-regime writers, I mean pro-Communist writers. I was sort of a Pavel Kohout analogy, on a regional level, if the name Pavel Kohout means anything to you. I was first dazzled by the ideas of Marxism after World War II. True, it's an idea, but it's a utopian idea: if individuals and society approached property and working for the society as working for all to get rich, that society would be far better than the capitalist society, but that's all just a utopia."

  • "And then again at the end of the war, the bombing of Beroun, if you heard of it. As we were hiding in the shelter under the health insurance office, bombs were hitting the 'Plácek', the square where the hotel is today, the former Litava. Before that, three bombs hit the Town Mountain. The Germans who were firing at the plane from the lookout tower irritated those Allied airmen. The plane came back and dropped three bombs on the Mountain. My wife lived just below the Town Mountain and saw it firsthand. It blew their roof off, covering them with roof tiles. That was a very powerful experience at the end of the war."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Beroun, 16.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:09:38
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Marxism dazzled me after the war. I know it‘s a utopian idea today

Jaroslav Frolík
Jaroslav Frolík
zdroj: Witness's archive

Jaroslav Frolík was born in Beroun on 25 January 1933. He witnessed the bombing of Beroun in April 1945. He spent the rest of the war in Luh pod Branovem to be safe from possible further bombing. He completed a cooperative school, then took a correspondent job at the Tiba textile factory. Spent his military service with an anti-aircraft regiment near Pilsen. Following his military service he returned to Tiba and worked as a supply clerk. While employed, he began to study at the business academy. He then went on to study at the University of Economics in Prague (VŠE). Over time, he worked his way up to a managerial position in the plant. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) early. He spoke out against the invasion in August 1968. He was eventually expelled from the CPC and persecuted for his political views: he had to work blue-collar jobs in the years to come, was not left to stay in any of them for long and found it difficult to find work. During the Velvet Revolution, he co-founded the coordination centre of the Civic Forum (OF) in Beroun. He eventually resigned from the OF. He lived in Beroun in 2023.