Ing. Petr Náhlík

* 1961

  • "So I said to my wife, 'Look, we're staying here. But then we got more interested in the demonstration, the shouted slogans, the sung songs and things like that, so when the pressure from the uniformed and non-uniformed forces started, we found out that we couldn't leave the passage, that it was carefully locked. Nobody has explained this to this day, whether all the houses were locked by the district housing company or by State Security, but in any case all the houses were locked, the passages were locked, and it was just a trap from which there was no escape. Well, so we spent some time figuring out what [to do next]. We thought it was best not to move, because there were pressures from both sides. Suddenly, we looked out and found out that armored personnel carriers with plowshares were coming from the National Theater to attack the people, which is something we didn't experience during October 28th or Palach Week. At that moment my wife started to get scared. Not that I didn't, at least I didn't show it... I was [there] with a friend. Suddenly a lady who was standing next to us called my wife: 'Look, the car we are standing by is mine and I saved some people during Palach week, so come and get in the car.' Well, she got in her seat as the driver, my friend and I got in the back and my wife sat next to her. And at that point, the pressure was getting to the point that people were falling on the hood, climbing on the hood and so on. After a while, various members of State Security or police arrived, and of course, I don't remember after thirty years under what pretext they forced the driver to open the window, or whether they ripped the door off, I don't know. In any case, they sprayed tear gas inside, so we had no choice but to climb out like rabbits. My friend Honza Drnek climbed out first, and they beat him so badly that they broke his arm. I climbed up after him and, following his example, I immediately fell to the ground and curled up in a ball so they couldn't hit my face and guts. So the spine took everything."

  • "Then there was 28 October 1989, when we repeated the August episode, which [means] we called demonstrations in Karlovy Vary, Pilsen and I think even in Klatovy and Sušice. And by that time we had probably pissed off the regime a lot, so they had already rounded up people like me, so I was called in to give an explanation. My wonderful wife packed me a snack and a toothbrush, as we already knew from those dissident stories. I [thus] of course pissed them off in the interrogation, what the hell. Well, I told them there, 'My wife has known you since 1979, so she equipped me.' I classically shut down the interrogation, which was probably the best method. Then they detained me. It was interesting in that after the revolution, when they were looking for the car they were taking us in, they couldn't find it. It was something like a tin body for a multi-car or just some small vehicle. They put about three of us in it, each of us separately, like in a dungeon, so we had no idea who was in there, so we kept quiet. We had no idea where they were taking us. I have a fairly good sense of direction, so I understood that they were not taking us to Bory, but to Karlovy Vary, because there was no other straight road from Pilsen. We were taken to the Vykmanov prison between Jáchymov and Ostrov nad Ohří, a name that is rather famous as a 1950s prison camp. So we lived in a normal prison. We were detained there for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. There were more of us. I know only about the engineer Jaroslav Cuhr, who is today's [now former] chairman of the Confederation of Political Prisoners in Pilsen. At that time I knew him as a dissident and a classmate of my mother's from the construction industry. And [then] of course they let us go separately."

  • "I started going backpacking quite young. And at one of the first potlachs I went to, at the Zichovice lake - it was a potlach of the Fort Jatky settlement - I met older tramps who were eighteen years older than me. And they said, 'If you have the next weekend off, come to us at the Montana settlement in Šumava near Dešenice and you can help us with the wood. Well, so I went there and I was the only one who went there, otherwise there were people from the settlements who went there, of course. And I started to go tramping with these guys, even though they were my father's age. So we went to Budejovice and opposite the station we went to the Hotel Malše. It was only then that I learned that we were going to the Fort Hazard settlement cottage of the Zlatý klíč tramp settlement, whose members were Wabi and Miki Ryvola. And that, of course, is a huge experience for a young boy. I then responded to that experience [by], of course, bragging everywhere among my peers that I had been to the Ryvola brothers' cottage and settlement. And the most compelling response was [that] from my friend Shorty: 'Well, that's great, but what do we get out of it that you were at the Ryvola brothers' cottage?' Well, by that time we had gotten into samizdat, and as a result I took the question 'What do we get out of it?' seriously, and my then-girlfriend, now wife, and I began to think about publishing complete songbooks of the Ryvola brothers' songs."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Plzeň, 14.02.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 02:55:04
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
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    Plzeň, 21.02.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:23:16
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
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State Security officers beat my friend so badly that they broke his arm. I was curled up in a ball, so it was my spine that took everything.

Petr Náhlík probably at the age of eighteen
Petr Náhlík probably at the age of eighteen
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Petr Náhlík was born on 10 August 1961 in Pilsen. His father Josef Náhlík worked as a teacher of Czech language and history. His mother Miluška Náhlíková, maiden name Karhanová, was employed as a technical clerk at the company Pozemní stavby. She was one of those who contributed to the revival of the Scouts in 1968. At that time Petr Náhlík also became a member of the Yellow Shot Scout Troop. After Scouting was closed down again in 1970, he was a member of the South Cross hiking troop, led by the former Scoutmaster Jan „Akéla“ Kacerovsky, and after its closure he was a member of the Peřej troop under the banner of the Association for Nature and Landscape Conservation (TIS). He was influenced by Scouting and Woodcrafter education. Because of his mother‘s activities in the scouts, he was not accepted to the building industry school. From 1976 to 1977 he apprenticed as a bricklayer in Horní Počernice. This gave him a „worker“ profile and after a year he was accepted to the School of Construction in Pilsen, after which he graduated from the Faculty of Construction at the Czech Technical University in Prague. In 1984 he married Vera „Strunka“ Náhlíková, née Rudolfová, with whom he raised three children. Until 1990 he worked as a surveyor and chief designer of the Centre of Railway Geodesy of the ČSD in Pilsen. Until 1989 he published in samizdat, with his wife and friends they published mainly samizdat magazines and anthologies, at the same time they published and reproduced many works of banned authors. In 1988-1989, together with his wife Vera, he participated in anti-regime demonstrations in Prague and Pilsen. He was imprisoned in Vykmanov Prison for 48 hours for preparing the demonstration of 6 May 1989 and the demonstration of 28 October 1989 in Plzeň. After the intervention of State Security and the National Security Service (SNB) at the demonstration on 17 November 1989 in Prague, he was unable to work for several weeks due to a spinal injury. Since 1990, he has also published in the official press and has been involved in the non-profit sector. Since 1990 he has been a municipal politician in Pilsen. At the time of the filming (2023) he lived with his wife in Pilsen.