Jan Rybář

"Well, I'm like a small child, there were calendars during the first republic. And in those calendars there were, for example, photos of kulaks hanging by twine, ten of them next to each other. There were photos of pops nailed to church doors. So, we already knew it before the war. Then an Orthodox emigrant from Russia lived next door in our street with his wife. What was her name, his name was Alexei and her name was Ariadna, and they had a maid, Marina, and they simply reported to us. You ran away from here. Then Professor Velihorský was teaching us at primary school, he was also an emigrant. And he had to be content with what there was. He was actually a university professor. And he taught us at a primary school. Or at the burgher school, actually. They also told us how it would be. Our local doctor. That was Nikolsky, his wife was a dentist. Russian emigrants. So, everyone told us that it would be far worse than the Nazi occupation. Actually, that it will be more refined."

"Well, that's such a stupid story. I had an accident here. It wasn't even an accident. I was pretty desperate there because you finished work and your clothes were stolen. When you had decent clothes, they stole them. I stood there naked wondering what to do. The other muggle says stupidly: 'So take those, they're pretty. So, take off.' So, he took them and gave me the clothes. It was terrible there. It was the wild west. Six hundred young boys, one better than the other, scamps like that. So, there was a certain Tonda Balatka, but don't put that there, he was a bankrupt medic and he understood medicine and so on. And so, he tells me: 'OK, I'll injure you, you give me 50 vouchers, the prison money, as a deposit. Then when you succeed, when they push you away, you'll give me the rest.' So here he tore my tendon. You can't see that, it's fifty years or so."

"When I was in those ironworks, I had a crisis there because it escalated so much. Their visits, every other day. They were getting nastier and nastier. Well, I was just thinking to myself, what the hell if I put my head in the track here. As I was working, the pans with that metal were riding over me. They drove there with it hot from the oven. From that blast furnace those big pans were riding over my head. I thought to myself, if I climbed the ladder here and put my neck on the rail, I would run away from all the State Security officers. So that was, I think, the biggest crisis. I didn't do it, but I thought it would probably be the most sensible thing to do."

"It was in was in 1959. There were interrogations, one after another, and then they arrested me. I got two years back then. So, I spent those two years mostly in Valdice u Jičína prison, where I had many, about eighty priests and several bishops. Seven, eight bishops were there. Well, it was a great place to study there, I had to do something there besides work, even during that work, we were grinding crystal glass, so there I listened to the lectures of the gentlemen who were there and I also achieved priestly ordination there."

"After returning from Austria, I applied to the Hradec Diocese, because I was ordained by Bishop Otčenášek and I promised him that I would be in his diocese. And that's another story, when, I think, we could have already returned to a certain normality that we were admitted to the spiritual administration. Under various circumstances, my admission to the spiritual administration cost a bottle of Metaxa. That was such a key to softening the regional secretary and also my style of such a frivolous priest, because he saw in me no priest, I also gave the impression of a secular person. That's what I always tried to do, so that some unnecessary sign of the spiritual mission that I have, would not stick to me. You had to grow a little around those people, that's what we tried to do all the time, didn't we."