"I was probably a big idealist. I had a slightly different idea of what would happen after the revolution. The fact that there is a group of people who have a lot of money and others who don't have money, is because we have moved to a different system of society, you have to take that into account. But I imagined that something would finally change towards the deaf. I knew that in America when the President speaks at a press conference with some important information, there is an interpreter by his side. That was my idea, that that would be the way it would work here, and finally, the deaf would be able to say, 'We're treated like everybody else,' and it's not. The interpreter is 'keyed in' on TV, he's not there live. He would be seen by the journalists and by the public who came to the briefing, the footage goes out into the world. I saw on Slovak television that they had an interpreter at a meeting there. At the Festival of Freedom, the commemoration of the birth of T.G. Masaryk, at the Sportmania, there is an interpreter next to the speaker."
"I didn't participate in any demonstrations during 1989. I wasn't brave enough, and we had small children. I was more of an information broker for the deaf. We would meet, what I had picked up, I would tell them, 'Now the situation is going this way and that way, in Prague they say this and that, in Pilsen this.' I collected, as they say, gossip and passed it on to the deaf. I took information from the press, from television, or I heard something on the way in public transport. So that's what I told them in a nutshell to keep them up to date. It was not clear to everyone what was going on."
"The biggest exercise that gave me vocabulary in sign language was watching TV. My dad and mom loved to watch it, and my mom loved crime shows and figure skating. Back then everything was black and white, the commentators would say, 'Now so and so is coming on, she's wearing a light blue dress', they described the athletes' outfits. What they said on TV, that's what I used to sign to my mother, during figure skating and during the crime shows. If I didn't know a word, I'd articulate it and Mummy would say, 'It's signed like this.' That was the best school, I got the vocabulary of those individual signs."
Miroslav Hanzlíček was born on 9 November 1956 in Pilsen. Both of his parents, his mother Marta and father Miroslav, were deaf due to illness. His father worked as a typographer as a foreman, and his mother repaired stockings. From an early age, he learned sign language from his parents. He grew up in the deaf community, where his parents took him. His father, Miroslav, was the treasurer of the Deaf Association of Pilsen and later its chairman. From 1971 to 1975, he trained as a typographer, just like his father. During childhood and youth, he performed puppet theatre in the World of Fairy Tales in Plzeň. After his apprenticeship, he joined the Stráž printing house, initially as a typesetter, then working at the company and supplying typographic material. Due to high blood pressure, he was exempted from compulsory military service. During the November Revolution of 1989, he provided information to the deaf people of Pilsen about what was happening. In 1994, when the printer started computer graphics, he was dismissed from his job. He started to make a living as a sign language interpreter, worked for the Pilsen Association of the Deaf, and lectured at high school and university. Since 2012, he has been the chairman of the Deaf Association Pilsen. He helps the deaf to get in touch with the world and tries to explain to the hearing how to communicate with them. Together with his wife Dana, he raised two sons and a daughter, and his daughter Kristýna Voříšková also interprets for the Deaf Association Pilsen.
