Vojtěch Janoušek

* 1945

  • "They came for my mother a little later. I remember that because I was sick and lying on the couch in the kitchen. They came in, told my mother to get dressed, they were smoking in the hall. I was sick, alone with my mother. They were smoking and knocking the ashes into the holy water sprinkler we had there. My mother always crossed herself when leaving home. Then when the water in the sprinkler was being changed, we found cigarette ashes in it. That's just to illustrate the situation."

  • "I remember when my mother came home from her husband's trial, she was upset and said, 'Our lawyer is useless! They gave him ten years! They gave him ten years, and he said: Take it! It was treason. They gave him the lower end of the penalty range.'"

  • “Since my father had an agricultural background he made this small flowerbed behind the house and planted some flowers there. And when the cop found out he stomped on them, to make him see that he was stomping on them. Father was probably quite offended by that because he never forgot to mention it. And so years went by. He worked in construction, they were building housing estates, it was nicknamed Březové Hory but now I know it’s the housing estate called Zdaboř. It was opposite Svatá Hora and the view was a consolation to him and many others. He also promised that he would go there to have a look at it after getting out.”

  • “A Communist Party official lived across the street from us and his two children were about the same age as us. I’m talking about me and my sister Ludmila. Back then, of course, there weren’t as many cars so it was normal to use the streets for playing. And I don’t know how, somehow we started talking to them, who has what, whose brother was taller, and we have this and that… I must’ve been about four years old when I told them: “And we have a rifle at home and we will shoot you!” My dad then had a lot to explain after that. It was true, we did have a rifle, some sort of old shotgun inherited from our grandfather. That’s just for illustration.”

  • “The visits took place in Milín. Right next to the train station there was this wooden house surrounded by barbed wired fence, in each of the four corners there was a man with a machine gun. They let us inside the wooden house, there was a large room and people pretty much from one single train that arrived maybe even from Slovakia, a special train, and we all waited there for the buses to arrive and bring the prisoners to this visit room. And there would always be a bus, there were visits, the others waited, then another bus, and so on. The seating was done as follows, on a bench there was a convict, a National Security Corps officer, a convict, an officer, a convict and the other side was packed with family members.”

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Change what you can change and don’t worry about what you can’t change

Vojtěch Janoušek portrait, 13 years old
Vojtěch Janoušek portrait, 13 years old
zdroj: Lukáš Žentel

Vojtěch Janoušek was born on the 15th of January 1945 in the Podolí hospital in Prague. He had five siblings and grew up in a Christian environment - his father was an active member of the Christian democratic party and the secretary of the Catholic Youth Club. Between the years 1953 and 1954 the State Security first arrested his brother Jan and then both his father and mother. His sister was taking care of him at the time. The father was sentenced to ten years of prison for high treason and he went through prisons in Banská Bystrica, Jáchymov, Příbram, and Pankrác in Prague. Following his mother‘s release he visited his father in prison several times. He was not allowed to study at a university so he became a carpenter. Later he worked at a company called Vojenské Stavby, in 1963 he got married and had two children. In 1969 he took the Scout Promise and his dedication to the movement continues to this day. At the time of writing this text he was retired and lived in Prague 10. His garden is decorated with an iron cross installed by his father in 1947 as an expression of gratitude to God for protecting the family during the Second World War.