Adolf Lisý

* 1949

  • “Airplanes were flying all the time throughout the night and so we thought that there would be some army exercise or something like that. We noticed something on the hill where there is the road which passes through Plaňany and toward Prague. The road did not bypass Plaňany at that time, but cars passed through the main square. And they landed with a helicopter up there on that hill. We said that we would go there and see what was happening. We climbed up on the hill and they flew away and they left one poor guy there and his task was to point to the tanks in which direction to go. The tanks were heading for Prague, and those who were driving them were Russians. And we saw this poor chap in rugged clothes. It was in summer. He had this long army coat. They tore it off for him at the bottom, because it was probably too long. We started talking to him, asking him what he was doing there and so on. We had some bottles of beer and so we offered him beer: ‘Here is a beer for you.’ He accepted, and he drank two beers and he was stoned. And those ‘fighters’ from Plaňany came there, and they already knew what was happening. They cursed all of us, telling us that we were collaborationists because we were talking with that Russian soldier. But he did not have a clue where he was. I think that most of them didn’t have any idea where they were... When we realized what was going on, we then changed the signboards and direction signs for them a little. We told them to go toward Zalešany. It was quite funny. The road has many serpentine curves, and they were not able to turn with those tanks in the serpentines. That was good, well, we had a laugh about it.”

  • “I found something for myself in all positions. A party of moderate progress, so to speak, within the legal boundaries. Like the signing of the anti-Charter. It had to be done at all schools. They came to me and wanted me to sign it for them. I said: ‘Why would I sign anything for you? Let me read it first.’ - ‘No, we don’t have the text.’ I told them: ‘Go to hell then. I will not sign a paper declaring that I oppose something if I don’t even know what it is that I should oppose.’ Then they came to me one more time and I told them the same thing and then they have not come anymore. And nothing happened, it was fine.”

  • “Of course, at that time, they [communists] would stop us tramps from time to time – there was this scandal that a certain American would always fly over the state border with his helicopter from the direction of Lipno, and he landed on the shore of the Lipno water reservoir. Some Germans jumped into his helicopter, all had been apparently agreed beforehand, and he flew back over the border so quickly that he was gone before our border patrol guards were able to react. Well, and we went tramping to that area when this happened, and they were checking us nearly every two kilometres. There were policemen and soldiers. ‘What are you doing here? Where did you come from? Where did you sleep?’ Obviously, we spent the nights in the forests. We did not care about sleeping in campsites. We thus had to look at the map constantly in order to know where the nearest campsite was located, and then we would claim that we had spent the night there. Fortunately they were so busy that they no longer verified whether we really camped there or not. I think that we have not spent a single night in an official campsite. We always slept somewhere in the open air. Only once we slept in the border zone and they made us get out of there. But we didn’t go there on purpose, no, we mistakenly wandered there when it was dark.”

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    Pašina u Kolína, 16.11.2017

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Do not fear and do not steal

Childhood
Childhood
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Adolf Lisý was born on March 26, 1949 in Kolín and he grew up in nearby Plaňany. Adolf was participating in summer camps of Pioneers (youth organization supported by the communist regime - transl.‘s note) since the age of nine and later he became a Boy Scout. He established and led the Boy Scout troop in Ratboř, where he moved after his wedding in 1975. He studied arts education and special education with focus on etopedia at the Pedagogical Faculty of Charles University in Prague. He held a number of jobs, working as a special education teacher and educator, as the director of the children‘s leisure centre in Kolín and as a Boy Scout leader and camp organiser. He experienced problems with forced disbandment of the Boy Scout troop, with forced membership in the Pioneer organization, and when Russians tanks arrived to Czechoslovakia in 1968 he was turning direction signs along the roads the other way so that the occupying army would become disoriented. During the normalization period he performed in a country music band, and their lyrics had to be regularly reviewed by a special committee. For many years he has been dedicated to artwork . Adolf painted stage props for a theatres and kindergartens, he sculpted, painted and repaired marionettes, played puppet theatre with Boy Scouts and he also holds exhibitions of his own paintings, sculptures and ceramics. At present he lives in Pašínka near Kolín.