Kamil Krůta

* 1969

  • "First we smashed some windows. Then we deliberately tried to see who could break more of them at once. On the way to Andrea's, who lived up Na Valech, or not Na Valech, she lived, well maybe it's Na Valech, on the way to the Bílou cestu. Actually she lived right above the Castle Gardens, like if you walked across Castle Square between the museum and the Philharmonic and went down the main path through the park and came out underneath. - So it's still sort of the centre defacto. What's Bilínská street like today, maybe? - Well, because she used to live right above that Bilinska Street. - So Nová Ves, maybe Bíla cesta now. - Something like that. We went to sleep at her place and on the way we reached, after the communists we actually reached Gottwald. And the whole thing was actually that I said that the statue could be knocked down and I actually gave it a 'body check' with my shoulder, the statue, and it swung. So it was clear that it was not firmly anchored and that it could be knocked down. So we looked at each other and we threw it down. - I read somewhere about you at the time that you added this funny story that you spoke to the statue saying, 'You're getting fat somehow...' Or what was it? - I complained to Gottwald that, although I was young, I was getting fat from the booze, and he said, 'I need to lose some too.'"

  • "We left the prison and they took us on some buses to the first station and there was a shop open. And now all the con men went and bought up all the booze that was there and we got on the train that was going to Prague. So it must have been a short distance from Rakovnik. And now within ten minutes they were all drunk, and as they hadn't drunk for a long time, they all started to get aggressive and brutal fights started, with everybody taking things out on each other. And in this state of mind we arrived at the station in Holešovice, I think, I don't remember exactly, but I think it was Holešovice. And there was a special unit waiting there, and they were just pulling people off the train. And bloody, dismembered guys were climbing off the train. The whole time my friend and I, with this guy Štěrba, were still sewn up in the toilet, and we had a badge, and we were just slowly moving around, and we were locked in, so that nobody could get at us and we wouldn't get into any trouble. Because it was very clear to me that that was the first way to go back to detention."

  • "[In Frankfurt am Oder] they mysteriously pulled me off the train and mysteriously never once looked at me and didn't really care what I was going to do. All they told me was that I was to go back home via Berlin. That I couldn't go that way, and I went down the hill a short distance from the station, and there you could see the river, the crossing, and I realized - I already knew from the map that I was at the border. I was just following the river, just a few kilometres, and there I decided in a hurry to cross the river because it was getting dark. Of course, I didn't realize that the backpack would be stretched with water because it was made of that raincoat, waterproof [fabric]. So I thought it would last for a while, and it didn't. So I ended up drowning everything and all I had left was my pants and my shirt. - So the cutlery stayed in the Oder? - Cutlery, passport, money, shoes, everything. I scrambled out of the water on the other side and now it was completely silent. Suddenly I hear some footsteps and I think: 'Wow, it's some border guards, I have to watch out for that'. Finally the moon came out and I saw that it was cows grazing. So I walked around the cows, through some swamps, and I was a little bit worried because I was going into the swamps in the blind at different times. Eventually I got onto some dirt road that I was walking on, and I don't know how long it took me to get to the edge of the village and I could see cigarette lights there. There were some young boys sitting there smoking and I joined them and they took me home to their house."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 07.08.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 02:43:53
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I needed to lose weight and Gottwald told me he wanted to lose weight too, so he went down

Kamil Krůta playing guitar
Kamil Krůta playing guitar
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Kamil Krůta was born on 18 April 1969 in Teplice. Since his childhood he has been fond of music and playing the guitar. Thanks to this, he met peers with similar interests and got into the circle of punk culture in Teplice. As an excellent guitar player he went through punk bands such as Hluchý telefon or FPB. While preparing for a foreign engagement with FPB at a festival in the Polish town of Jarocin, he decided to emigrate via Poland and robbed an antique shop to provide funds for his trip. After another unsuccessful attempt, he was arrested and taken back to Czechoslovakia from his subsequent detention. In an attempt to avoid basic military service, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Horní Beřkovice, where he was treated with a total of eight sets of electric shocks. After his release, he returned to the FPB group again. He was sentenced to a suspended sentence for illegal border crossing (crossing the Odra River), theft in an antique shop and a skirmish with members of Public Security (VB). On March 11, 1988, along with two other punk rockers from Teplice, he toppled a statue of Klement Gottwald in Teplice. He served eleven months of a 30-month sentence in pretrial detention, with the rest spent in the women‘s prison in Pardubice and at the I. NVS in Oráčov, where he remained until a presidential amnesty. In early January 1990, a week after a successful prison strike, which he initiated and led, he was released along with other inmates. Shortly after, he left the country. Together with his friend and bandmate Milan Nový, he settled in Germany, where they founded the band Pseudo Pseudo. Later, they each went their separate ways, and Kamil Krůta settled in the United States, working as a stonemason while remaining an active musician. As of the time of filming (2024), he lived with his family in Toulouse, France, performing under his stage name Koonda Holaa.