"So we agreed that we would help as special educators, psychologists and especially psychotherapists to do crisis intervention with refugees from Bosnia and Croatia. And especially from Bosnia from the concentration camps that they were in. Then, when Bosnia was gradually liberated and they were released from those camps, they came to the shelters and I know that we used to go to Bela-Jezova and Stráž pod Ralskem. There we worked with those people and that was the kind of work where you really realised that actually what they had been through was nothing compared to what they had been through. They lost their children, their siblings, and I know that when one gentleman told us that he was locked up there and he saw his brother shot and his father's head cut off and he had to watch it, those were just terrible moments."
"In Ljubljana it was really feelings of hopelessness, it was just the same. At Klíčov we tried to do these things a little bit differently, so actually the house, when we had thirty-six boys there at the time who had institutional and protective custody, we unlocked the house and we said we're going to train them for normal life, they were fifteen to eighteen years old. And we got quite a kick out of it, because actually it's true that a third of them were running away permanently and the cops were bringing them back and stuff, but two thirds of them were going normally to the ČKD and Pragovka at that time, those companies in Prague 9 were still functioning, those factories. So they used to go there to work and to the bakeries in Klíčov. And they came back, they worked normally. So we thought that's quite... I guess we chose the right way, that we would just not help that one third if they didn't want to, and the two thirds caught on and we worked quite well and I can say that I still meet some of them now."
Jiří Pilař was born on 30 May 1957 in Hamr near Litvínov. His father, František Pilař, was demoted from his position as a police officer before he was born and sent to a brown coal mine; he died prematurely when Jiří was two years old. He then grew up with his mother Maria, née Baxová, who worked as a labourer. After graduating from high school, he was not recommended for college, and in order not to have to go to the army, he enrolled in a teacher‘s training course on the recommendation of his tennis coach. He then went on to the Faculty of Education, where he graduated with a degree in special education. His professional focus began to take this direction. Even before the Velvet Revolution, he worked as an educator of delinquent youth and young toxic addicts in Prague‘s educational institutions, which had special specifics at that time. It was also an area under constant surveillance by the State Security. Since 1989, Jiří Pilař has been working at the Klíčov Educational Care Centre. Here he experienced the Velvet Revolution, after which he actively participated and is still participating in changes in institutional care, including the Law on Institutional and Protective Education; today he is working with other experts to update it. For over ten years he headed the Department of Special Education at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. He has also been involved in other areas of social life, for example, in the form of crisis intervention to help refugees from the Bosnian region. In 2009 he became a member of TOP 09 and currently (2023) he is the chairman of the organization in Šeberovo. He is also the deputy director for the outpatient and day care department at the Klíčov Educational Care Centre. He lives in Prague.
