Jozef Német

* 1951

  • "I served on the State and Local Government Committee and we were like a gesture committee to redesign the system. As you know, in every town, every village, there was a national committee that was put in place. They put the chairman there, its secretaries and so on. And this was to be changed and a system was worked out that local government was to be established, that bodies like mayors, mayoralties and village councils were to be elected. If any of you are involved in that, you know that then those first municipal elections took place, where there was still a lot of work for us because we went around to those individual cities and towns, and even to the municipalities, that still, or quite often those people voted for the old ones there. There was the chairman of the Local National Committee and he became the mayor as well. And that's where many people didn't understand the principle that the city manager or the mayor just organizes his town deputies or municipal deputies who decide everything. Before that, the system was that the chairman of the Local National Committee made the decision and everybody had to respect that."

  • "We went to the square and it happened that an armoured personnel carrier broke down there and the whole convoy was left standing, they couldn't start it. And then another one behind it, it was a tank, so it turned off and just wanted to drive through, we had a beautiful fountain there, we had a marble fountain, the square was paved, and he wanted to drive through it then, to go around the broken down machine. And then a mass of people simply stood in front of him and they all started shouting, 'If you want to go through here, you've got to kill us!' And then the tanker backed up, drove off, rammed into the disabled transporter, it started going, and the convoy continued on. We were all proud that we had saved our fountain and our little square."

  • "What still remains in my memory at that time was the Communist Party herding people into cooperatives and banning them from running their own businesses. I know specifically, my grandfather was actually a tradesman, that's part of the reason why he was well off, or relatively so, that he was able to make new shoes. But at that time Bata had already started to operate in Czechoslovakia, which was simply supported by the state as well, and all those small tradesmen were being liquidated. So he was forbidden to make new shoes, he could only make shoes, just repair some soles, mend, or if there was a tear in the shoe or something like that. But you couldn't make a living out of that. He could even sew new shoes there secretly, but that was again quite strictly controlled by the authorities. A lot of times at night we had what they called the finance people come in, just a check, and they'd go through the whole flat looking for new skins to see if that was being done."

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    online, 31.03.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:25:01
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Prague is still the capital for me, even though I live in another country

Jozef Német in 2021
Jozef Német in 2021
zdroj: Stories of Our Neighbours project

Jozef Német was born on 2 February 1951 in Michalovce, eastern Slovakia, the third of six children. His mother came from Handlová village, where she was injured in a bombing during the war. Her grandfather, with whom they lived, ran a shoemaking business. The communists forbade him to make new shoes, he was only allowed to repair the old ones, but this could not support him. Jozef‘s father joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) so that his children could study and he could have a better job as an electrical engineer. He remembers the joy when Yuri Gagarin flew into space in 1961. Jozef Német graduated from the primary school in Michalovce and the secondary industrial school in Humenne. He won a national competition with the school volleyball team in 1968. He graduated from the Faculty of Chemical Technology of the Slovak University of Chemistry and worked in the production of ceramics in various factories in Slovakia. In his third and fourth year he completed the so-called military preparatory school, and after graduation he enlisted for only one year. He spent a month in Podbořany and the rest in Cheb. After his return, he worked in the Kerko company in Tomašovce and then in a small majolica factory in Pozdišovce. As a non-partisan, he was not allowed to hold managerial positions, and he did not get the position of foreman until just before the revolution. During communism, he was nominated as a people‘s judge and served for four years. For a long time in the east of Slovakia, they did not suspect that the communist regime might collapse, the first swallow was the candlelight demonstration in Bratislava in March 1988. He took part in public meetings and company meetings with the management. In the first free elections he was elected a deputy of the Slovak National Council for the party Public Against Violence. After the end of his mandate he worked in a wholesale grocery store. He remembers with regret the division of Czechoslovakia and still considers Prague his capital, where both of his children live. For the last 25 years he and his wife ran a newsagent‘s shop, but he is now retired. He lives in Slovakia in Michalovce.