Vlastimil Procházka

* 1956

  • "Well, it was arranged by that Honza Rejžek again. That he sent us some text of that [petition] and the forms for the signatures, name, surname, residence. And it was to be sent to Mr. Křižan, who was former President Havel´s collaborator. That's where it used to be send. So here it was... We got quite a few signatures from Veselí and the surrounding area. Probably some good guy... of course, there's always someone who says who gave him the the sheet to sign. I guess that´s how they got to me. So they arrested me. I was here at the police station all day. So I was sort of interrogated there. Of course, I stood my ground. I was like, 'Yeah, I signed it, I had it signed.' They asked me what I liked. You couldn't do anything, you couldn't travel, you could do nothing. You couldn't say your opinion. I said, 'I had an opinion, you arrested me. What can I tell you?'Then they sent me home. I got a summons that they were sentencing me to six months in absentia, or [I had to] pay two thousand crowns. So nothing pleasant at the time. You couldn't have known that in two months there would be the coup."

  • "Of course, they offered me cooperation. It was interesting that a certain lieutenant Ingr from Kyjov was in charge of me. I don't know what he's doing now, he's probably retired too. He... ordered some wine and everything for me, and then it turned out that he needed to sign something and that they would even arrange for me to have some better, three-room accommodation. Of course I refused. I couldn't do it. So then, luckily, they finally let me go. I was worried after Cibulka had uncovered the [State Security] collaborators, fortunately they didn't register me anywhere, so I guess I didn't... I didn't sign anything, but they could have made up anything. I admit that they interrogated me in this way, that they offered it to me."

  • "[People] called from all over the country and made inquiries directly at the town hall in Veselí. But there were so many inquiries that the councillors must have got scared. Three or four days before the event, we were summoned to the town hall and there were already policemen, State Security, the mayor of the town and [the Communist] Party members. We were summoned to be asked what it meant, what could be done about it. After some discussion they told us that they were cancelling the event, that it wasn't going to happen. In vain we tried to explain to them that we no longer had the power to cancel it somehow, the event, that these people were coming and that it would be even more of a problem than if the concert was in one place and then these people dispersed. That's what happened. We were standing at the train station since the morning that day, that Saturday, trying to make the people who were arriving to leave, saying that the event wasn't going to happen. Basically everybody got off and went straight to the park and made a concert there themselves. Only it was a problem for us, because - they didn't want to arrest us again, it was a problém again for them and they interrogated us again, those State Security members."

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    Veselí nad Moravou, 03.05.2022

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Vlastimil Procházka at a concert in Mutěnice
Vlastimil Procházka at a concert in Mutěnice
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Vlastimil Procházka was born on 3 November 1956 in Rýmařov to parents Maria and Zdenek Procházka. He spent his childhood in Ondrášov in the Bruntál region (today belonging to the Olomouc district), then the family moved to Veselí nad Moravou. There he lived through the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. After training as a steel worker at the Železárny Veselí nad Moravou ironworks, he started his basic military service in 1976. When he returned from the army in 1978, he joined a group of people whom State Security referred to as „troublesome youth“. Under the patronage of the third organization of the Socialist Union of Youth, Vlastimil Procházka organized a number of musical events, including the legendary Summer with Music festival, which was banned at the last minute by the city administration and State Security. In 1989, Vlastimil Procházka signed the document called Several Sentences, for which he was fined 2,000 crowns. After the fall of the communist regime, pamětník founded the culture focused Artforum association in Veselí nad Moravou, which followed the Jazz Section activities. Until 2021 he worked in the culture house in Veselí. Today (2022) he is retired, but still works in the support team of the handball club in Veselí nad Moravou, as he has done for the last 30 years.