Jan Jurkas

* 1938

  • “I experienced that there was an explosion in the Hlubina mine in 1961 when my uncle worked there. He was not at that shift, there were a hundred and eleven dead. I also experienced an emergency there. We immediately had to abandon the shaft because they let the smell like eggs into the pipes when there is a risk. That came and that is how I knew it was bad that I had to leave the workplace. So we came to the shaft and they offered us – to immediately leave for another shaft, almost two kilometres but in a uniform that we were wearing which meant in short pants and really dirty. So, we decided because we were young that we would climb the ladder. I climbed the ladder for nine hundred and fifty meters."

  • “My dad was on a (military) exercise in 1945, he arrived home and I had a box of grenades in the cellar. We as children picked them in the gutters and took them home. I had a rifle and a machine gun. We brought home a machine gun, he (my friend) was a year older, he was nine years old. We stuck the machine gun between pales in the garden, we had a few cartridge belts, however, we were not able to trigger it. The police officer Beranovský was walking around, and he saw we were doing something, came over to us, and took the machine gun away from us.”

  • “I clearly remember, they blew up the bridge in Jihlava (if you have read about it somewhere), (they blew up) the German train. A locomotive going in the direction of Brno crossed the bridge, it overturned to the right side and the carriages fell off the bridge. We as children, because there is a rock there and we were on top of that rock and watched in the morning or the following day as they were taking out dead Germans off the train. We were almost there. Then we were searching, I not that much, for guns and other things in the river. We were looking under the water.”

  • “Well, we complained at the meetings, to cut a long story short we did not suit them… (They asked us) whether we agreed that the Soviet Troops came here to save us. We said that we were a free state and that they had come here unjustly, and that settled it."

  • “It was to be continued that I was interested in being admitted to the Aviation Vocational School that my friend had been admitted to and it was all going well, (it seemed) that I would be allowed to start in Košice in January. However, when you finished school back then, it was not possible to say you would not go to work. You had to either start studying at a vocational school or get a job. And they would not let me stay home for four months. My dad said he would take care of me. They were pressing me and persuaded my dad. They promised him the moon and that there was a chance to make a living there in all aspects, that when I finished, there would be a chance to get into the vocational school. I attribute it to the fact that my dad and mum joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1945 and they resigned their memberships in 1948.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Měšín, 22.11.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 59:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Měšín, 19.12.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 48:14
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Coal mines instead of the sky

A portrait photo of Jan Jurkas when he was a student at the vocational school in Karviná
A portrait photo of Jan Jurkas when he was a student at the vocational school in Karviná
zdroj: Jan Jurkas´s private archive

Jan Jurkas was born on 18 January 1938 in Jihlava, and he has been interested in flying since his childhood. He attended a model making and he went to help at a nearby Henčov Airport. His parents resigned their memberships of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after 1948 and after finishing elementary school, Jan Jurkas applied for the Aviation Vocational School in Košice, Slovakia which was denied during the summer holidays of 1952. He later left to study at the Mining Vocational School in Karviná where his until that time hidden athletic talent showed, and he soon joined the Baník Karviná unit. After some time, he sent an appeal and a request for transfer to the Aviation Vocational School, however, it was rejected. He worked in the ČSA mine where he kept working until 1961, he later returned to Vysočina Region and started to work for Motorpal in Jihlava where he was offered to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He accepted the offer, but he was expelled from the ranks of the Communist Party for his opposition to the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. He became a secretary at the Local National Committee in Měšín in 1971 and he retired shortly after 1989. In 2008, when he was sixty years old, he tried his first flight in an Airbus transport aircraft simulator. At the time of recording, Jan Jurkas and his wife lived in their family house in Měšín.