František Jankovský

* 1947

  • "As boys, many times we saw a ball flying in the air and we watched where it fell. Then we would find it in the woods, for example, and we would take rubber bands from the popped balloon and make these 'crackers'. We would blow it up and pop it. On the balloons were attached printed material and leaflets, I don't know what the content was, whether it was 'inciting leaflets' or something like that, but it was sent through Free Europe. There were also these little aluminium pennies attached to them, with a bell cut out in them and it said Free Europe. One day the balloon fell down next to a pub and a cow that was grazing there had a heart attack when the balloon burst."

  • "The border guards used to keep constant watch in the forest. I was already doing hunting, so I used to go there. At one crossroads they had what we called a 'misleading metre'. And it was a cubic metre of wood, but it was built out of planks. It was a shack covered with pieces of wood, and that's what they were hidden in. If they saw somebody coming, they'd check them right away. When I went into the woods, for example, they checked me too, but they usually recognized me. I had a Border Guard helper's pass."

  • "I remember well the August of '68 because I was working as an assistant supervisor when it started to fly. The officers split into two groups, one wanted to shoot, the other wanted to hide somewhere. In the army, the fresh recruits used to be the liaison, that one ran when the alarm went off and find the officers he was in charge of. And I took the liason and went quickly to town. I was looking for Sergeant Skřivánek, the longest serving one. People were all confused in the town, and nobody knew what was going to happen. The Russians and their tanks had settled right next to us at Vážany behind the barracks. When we were fiddling with our radios, they were scolding us: 'Uchadi, uchadi!' [Get away] because we were messing up back into their waves. And when they had Soviet Tankers' Day, they put the tanks right in front of our gate so we couldn't do anything. Our unit was not a combat unit, but just a repair unit."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Karlovy Vary, 17.07.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:31:57
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The Soviet soldier gave me a kiss and a watch, threw his machine gun on his back and was gone.

František Jankovský at the military service
František Jankovský at the military service
zdroj: Witness´s archive

František Jankovský was born on 4 June 1947. His parents came to Krásné (formerly Neu Metternich) in 1946 to settle the border area. They were given the house of a displaced German family, where his mother Anna Jankovská immediately began to take care of the domestic animals that had been left on the site, while his father Antonín Jankovský was still in Prague and initially commuted to visit her. Later, Antonín Jankovský worked in the forest and drove a horse-drawn carriage, then got a job at the sawmill in Mariánské Lázně and then worked as a tailor there. Later he worked as a miner at the mine in Zadní Chodov and on Panský vrch. František Jankovský‘s parents joined the Communist Party but were not active. František Jankovský‘s life in Krásné was influenced by the proximity of the border zone, the Iron Curtain. As children, they often noticed the balloons with leaflets and the words Free Europe that Radio Free Europe sent across the border into Czechoslovakia. They also often met with the crews of the Border Guard, the „PS members“. His father used to go to the shaft on the border and sometimes took František with him. In 1962, he joined the apprenticeship in Cheb as a mechanic. In 1966 he started his miltary service, spent two years in the tank workshops as a tank mechanic in Kroměříž, and eventually worked his way up to the position of workshop foreman. In April 1968, he realized that something was about to happen, because a topographic exercise of the Warsaw Pact armies was underway and František Jankovský‘s unit was not allowed to leave Libavá with tanks. In August 1968, he worked as an assistant to the unit supervisor. On the twenty-first of August, confusion broke out at the unit, the officers were not sure how to act, whether to fight or to get out of the way of the Soviets - they put the tanks right in front of the barracks gates. František Jankovský returned home to Krásné after his military service. The Soviet garrison was also in Tři Sekery at that time. Jankovský joined the local farm in the workshops as a repairman. In 1971, he passed the driving test for the licence „three“ and switched to heavy machinery. Later he worked as a stockman. He also became a volunteer helper to the Border Guard, whose task was to inform the Border Guard about the movement of suspicious people who might try to cross the state border and escape to the West. Already during his military service František Jankovský joined the Communist Party. From 1978 he worked at the Jitona factory in Tři Sekery as a driver and was also in charge of transport, boiler operators and gatekeepers. Later he worked in Mariánské Lázně in the company Hotel Servis, where he stayed until his retirement. He was also involved in local politics and administration. Already in the 1970s he was a member of the National Committee in Tři Sekery and held this position until the revolution. He did not resign from the Communist Party after the revolution, but his local party organization, of which he was the chairman, in fact disappeared. After the revolution he became deputy mayor of the village. In retirement, he then began working in Tři Sekery as a maintenance worker and school caretaker at the local school, where he was also working in 2023. At that time, he was still living in Krásné.