“From a farm, not too large farm. The farm had about 48 hectares and the communists had in their constitution that if they had less than 50 hectares, the farmers were allowed to farm independently. But grandpa was a very progressive man and for instance, he built a cowhouse in Kyškovice that delegations were coming to there see. He built a cowhouse for cows and from one side there was a kind of a ropeway for bringing in fodder, and from the other side they were taking out the manure, also in a ropeway hanged above the centre aisle, without any wheels or anything like that. And every cow had its own drinking fountain, which was designed so that water started to flow when the cow pushed it. So grandpa constructed this cowhouse back in the 1930s. But the communists then wanted… and they invented this scheme against my uncle - deliveries that he was absolutely unable to fulfil, never, and they sentenced him for that. Some slandering articles even later appeared about him in the newspapers that were being published there. My aunt kept them. And they imprisoned him for two years. But unfortunately, my uncle was imprisoned in Jáchymov where they mined the uranium ore, and shortly after his release, he lived for some time and then he died, because he had contracted some radiation-related disease in Jáchymov, and he died. They evicted the whole family from Kyškovice. One day they told them that a car would arrive for them the following day in the morning and that they would need to leave the place. They made them get on trucks and they transported them all the way to Šumperk, to the Jeseníky Mountains, where aunt then lived with their two children, she had two children, but there were also other farmers, so-called kulaks, from the surrounding villages and she later befriended them. They didn’t know each other, but they became friends. She always used to say…they were placed into a hut which had openings in between the log beams and wind was blowing through. It was in winter when they transported them there... or in autumn, well, it was after the harvest time. And they lived there for at least two years and they had no water there, obviously; well, there was nothing there.”
“They summoned me to the municipal administration office which they had in Prague 4, because the entire television company already had its headquarters in Kavčí hory. And there was something like an interview. The comrade who led the interview, I think that she had already been informed about something, otherwise she would not have noticed. You had to write a curriculum vitae for the interview, and it was explicitly stated there that they required you to describe your relation to religion. And I have been brought up as an evangelical. In Vinohrady where we lived, there was a congregation, the largest in Prague, and I was going there regularly without fail and I had my confirmation there. And I experienced a number of other events there. Later we had our wedding with Hanka there, too. And the comrade told me at the end of the interview: ‘Comrade, but you did not fill out the question about your relation to religion. Tell us something about it.’ And at that moment, really, at the very moment... I don’t know if you know the passage from the Bible, it was as if somebody was standing behind me and really said into my ear: ‘Petr, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.‘ I don’t know if you know that passage or not. It is in the Bible, when Jesus Christ... when they arrested him and sentenced him, before crucifying him, they had been with Saint Peter and Jesus was sitting with his disciples during the Last Supper and Saint Peter… Jesus told them that this would happen, that he would be crucified and taken away from him. And he, Saint Peter, said: ‘Jesus, if they arrest you, I will always go with you, and I will never leave you.’ And Jesus told him: ‘Peter, before the rooster crows’ – it was in the evening – ‘before the rooster crows three times, you will deny me.’ The Bible says ‘deny.’ And I really heard it, as if somebody was speaking this into my ear, and I said: ‘But I will not.’ And I said to this comrade: ‘Well, you know, I have been raised like this and I have faith.’ – ‘Enough, that’s enough,’ she said, and so I got out of there.”
“Dad was fired shortly after 1948, he worked at the ministry of light industry here on the embankment, where the ministry building was. And we used to go there to visit him, I remember that, but I don’t remember the circumstances. They dismissed dad from his job, because he was a so-called ‘westerner’ and the communists either imprisoned all ‘westerners’ or they made their lives miserable by dismissing them from jobs. Dad was then unable to find any other job and because he already had a family, my sister was born and then another sister shortly after, and we were a total of four kids. So when dad was searching for work, the only option was that he learnt the electrical fitter’s trade and then nearly until the end of his life he was going to work at construction sites all over the country.”
“They led dad away for interrogation about two times, but we did not think much about it… Dad would simply go somewhere, all right. I remember that my mom always cried, she was scared what would happen to him, but fortunately about two or three days later he would always come back. So it was like this.”- “That means that he remained there for some interrogations?” – “Probably. He never spoke about it at home. I only remember the cops, who came to our home. There were two men, who talked to us children, they normally talked to us like adults talk to children, you know, and they were asking us questions, and I only realized it later that they were actually asking us about people with whom dad had contacts.”
Petr Kubánek was born on November 9, 1943 in London to Czechoslovak parents. He has younger brother Jiří, who was born in London as well, and sisters René and Jana, who were later born in Czechoslovakia. The family lives in the Vinohrady neighbourhood in Prague. Their father comes from Prague and their mother from Kyškovice near Roudnice nad Labem. The parents met in France where Petr‘s mother worked at first as an au pair and later as a clerk at the Czechoslovak consulate in Marseille. Petr‘s father, who held a doctoral degree in law, was one of the cofounders of the Czechoslovak Regiment of Army Volunteers in France and later he served in the 310th Fighter Squadron in Great Britain. After his return to Czechoslovakia he lost his job at the ministry and for the rest of his life he then worked as a fitter at construction sites. Petr Kubánek attended K. V. Rais Elementary School in Prague-Vinohrady, then a grammar school and he graduated from the production department at FAMU (The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). He was employed in ČST (Czechoslovak Television) for his entire life, at first in the department of current affairs where he worked together with many famous personalities of journalism, but when the communists later disbanded the department after 1968, he moved to the music production department. In the 1960s he suffered an injury while doing his military service and practicing a human pyramid during a rehearsal for the Spartakiade mass gymnastics event. The accident left his arm permanently immobile from the elbow down. Although he cooperated with foreign journalists in 1968 at the time of the Prague Spring and he met Winston Churchill Jr. and other personalities, he never decided for emigration due to his injured arm. His mother‘s family faced strong persecution. Later, when he retired, Petr worked on translating films. He is fluent in French and English. With his wife they have three sons and he still lives in Vinohrady.
