Miroslav Němejc

* 1962

  • "Personally, I worried because I never knew when they would come back and take all the things away from me again. I worried they would take my books. That's what I was afraid of, I was hiding some of my things. One never knew what they could do. I went to Děčín, I was looking for someone. They arrested me for being suspicious, because I was walking around the village. They approached me, took my bag, looked what was in there. They found books. There was a book from Rome. They took away, for example, Exupéry's Citadel, published in 1975 in Vyšehrad, arguing that it was Jehovist literature. You never knew what they would take away from your library, for example Plato, because they were dull and didn't know what it was. I was afraid of them taking some of my personal things again. Other than that, what bothered me was that a lot of my friends were arrested or persecuted in various ways. That was difficult. I was on hunger strike for Petr Pospíchal, and many requests for release were signed. We wrote to many people in the prison to let them know what was going on, to bring them some distraction. Some people were okay in the prison. But for example, with Jirous, we were worried what would happen to him. It was not good; he was in the correctional prison for the third time."

  • "One day I came to school and the headmaster was waiting for me. It was about halfway through the year. The headmaster came and said I had a visitor. He took me to his office. There were two men. They took me away. They did a personal search on me, and they found a picture of ten people from VONS (The Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted) at that time, some information about the Charter, the magazine and things like that. So of course, they didn't let me go. I stayed there for interrogation, and they took in my brother and Petr Hlavatý, also a Charter signatory. They kept me there for about fifty-three hours before they let me go."

  • "What did you think as a secondary school student about the regime, how long did you think it would last? How would it be? Did you have any idea?"-"Let me put it this way, until December 1989 I thought it would last forever, or at least another twenty or thirty years. I took it to be a permanent state that we would never get out of. Because we already knew what they were capable of. And at the same time, we knew how it would turn out, having the experience of the sixty-eighth year. So we expected it to last forever with various reforms. Then towards the end Gorbachev came, so we expected some kind of a reform. But we thought it would be more or less similar to what had been done before. I didn't expect the turn, I thought it would last forever."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    České Budějovice, 12.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:15:46
  • 2

    České Budějovice, 02.09.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:25:47
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I couldn‘t have done it any other way

Miroslav Němejc, 1976
Miroslav Němejc, 1976
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Miroslav Němejc was born on 3 August 1962 in Strakonice. He grew up with his brother Antonín, who was five years older and became his role model. After finishing primary school, he trained as a carpenter in České Budějovice and went to secondary school in Volyně. His brother Antonín signed the Charter 77 in 1978, and thanks to him Miroslav also joined the dissent. He followed Free Europe, read and reproduced samizdat, attended housing seminars and concerts of underground groups. In 1981, the State Security came to Miroslav‘s school, he was searched and interrogated for more than fifty hours. This was followed by expulsion from the secondary school. His brother Antonín was forced by the Secret Police to emigrate, while Miroslav could not find a job in Strakonice. He moved to Prague and worked in military construction. He married and had a son. From 1983 to 1984 he completed his compulsory military service in the labour unit and participated in the construction of the Dukovany nuclear power plant. After returning from the army, he divorced, took custody of his son and returned to Strakonice. He worked as a warehouseman in the Fezko factory. He again became involved in dissent, reproduced samizdat and supported petitions for the release of political prisoners. He became one of the movers of the Velvet Revolution in Strakonice. He has not met his brother Antonín since his emigration. Miroslav Němejc lived in Strakonice in 2021.