He thought it would be a one-time thing. State Security did not leave him alone anymore
Stáhnout obrázek
František Postupa was born on 12 February 1950 to his parents Vlasta and František Postupa in the small village of Hodonín near Nasavrky. A joyful childhood was replaced by an adventurous adolescence in the more relaxed sixties, when in 1965 he entered the Secondary Industrial School of Construction in Vysoké Mýto. It was there that he experienced the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. In the school magazine he criticised the invasion and threw stones at the barracks. He was greatly affected by the self-immolation of Jan Palach. For his funeral, a part of the class walked from Mýto to Prague, and he and his classmates went on hunger strike and occupied the school for four days. The intention to study political science at the Prague Faculty of Philosophy was thwarted by the closure of the department under the onset of normalisation. The witness joined Průmstav as a construction manager. He travelled with a band, was interested in art, and educated himself. In 1978, he signed a cooperation agreement with the State Security Service in order to travel abroad. In the 1980s, he was active in dissent. He attended residential lectures, learned Serbo-Croatian, and translated books by banned authors. In 1984 he joined the Czechoslovak Socialist Party. From the mid-1980s onwards, he participated in many demonstrations and was interrogated several times. As a result, he lost his job. In 1988 he signed Charter 77. In 1989, before the Velvet Revolution, he visited Poland. He took part politically in the Velvet Revolution, co-founded the Civic Forum in Chrudim and from 1990 worked at the municipal office. He travelled through the countries of the former Yugoslavia, where he has many friends. He is self-critical about his cooperation with the State Security Service, which had his name in the category of candidate for secret cooperation and agent. In 2024 he lived in Chrudim.
