Michal Polman

* 1959

  • "Four or three years before, our son died after giving birth. So it was a bit bound by what you probably also learned, it was bound by Chernobyl, when they drove their mothers to the parade on the first of May. Nobody knew what was happening over Europe. And instead of a pram in Jilemnice, we were the seventh who arranged the funeral. So when they told us this, the head doctor did, it brought us so closer toghether twisting our whole life. Yeah? So one day a boy was born, the next day he was taken by helicopter in Hradec dying. So that was such a negative period in my life."

  • "So I was nine at the time. I know that my grandmother, my second grandmother, Havel, had Dubcek in the room, Alexander Dubcek, who was the face of the new one. She had Ludvík Svoboda, who was in fact an army general and then a president. And these were the idols of my closest ones. And then I thought to myself, when I was older, that I wanted to meet these idols. Because then it follows my hobby. And I couldn't meet them for a long time, because on the one hand Mr. Dubček is Slovak. Or was, he is gone. And this didn't seem to go well enough. That time was special. And you probably learned, then everything was communist, right. It's hard to deal with it… Someone reconciled, someone didn't reconcile. I say quite openly and I'm not ashamed of it: I had the Communist Party book for four years."

  • "So that was my military entree. Of course I remember that. Those guys were great. We experienced a lot of interesting things there. And we experienced there… The hardest thing that happened to me there when I was the bulletin board, so the teachers know how Brezhnev died, then Chernenko and others, so it was so fast in the Soviet Union that we didn't even have time to redo the red papers and black papers. And the worst was when the boys from the next unit from Čáslav copied the terrain according to the old map and all four burned down. The oldest was twenty-eight years old. Helicopter leader or pilot. And then when you put the parties side by side there, it smells like you. So it was my army service."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Jablonec nad Nisou, 16.12.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 35:37
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Jablonec nad Nisou, 16.12.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 35:23
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I wanted to meet my idols

Michal Polman skiing
Michal Polman skiing
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Michal Polman was born on March 17, 1959 in the town of Semily to the family of Tadeáš and Lída Polman. He left primary school in Držkov and at today‘s Masaryk School in the village of Zásada behind Černá studnica. He graduated from the grammar school in Tanvald, where he also played football and downhill skiing. As part of his university education, he entered the University of Ústí nad Labem, where he became a teacher for first degree and physical education. He served in the Brno and Bechyně. He was a member of the Communist Party for four years. After 1989, he became deputy director at the Mozart Elementary School in Jablonec nad Nisou. Michal Polman is a passionate collector of autographs of famous personalities, and has the signature of Václav Havel in his collection. In 2021, Michal Polman lived with his wife in Jablonec nad Nisou.