Ing. Jiří Sedmidubský , CSc.

* 1940

  • "The way it was done was that all the witnesses I suggested should appear, my supervisor at the time appeared and confirmed that he knew about all my contacts. The two officers appeared and somehow confirmed that the binding act had not taken place, that I had not signed anything. Ultimately, it would have to be in that file, and it wasn't, it's not there, there was no signature, and they never wanted it on me. If I could have at least been the hero who refuses to sign and slams the door, but I didn't get that opportunity."

  • "And when we came back, for a moment it looked like I was going to quit in the factory, but the director asked if it was true that State Security had been informed, and they confirmed it. And thus I became a kind of person who could travel and not be in immediate danger of getting into trouble. Now, thinking about it later, knowing all the things that I learned after the 1990s, I understand that it was an uncomfortable situation for State Security, because it was anything but the secret contact that they probably imagined. But that's just the way I did it, and I learned from it, and in the future I've always been guided by that, just not to allow any secret contact [with the State Security]. And I think that's how I managed to survive until that '90s."

  • "My parents decided in 1947 to go to Yugoslavia, to Makarska, for a holiday. So they took me with them, and the drive through that war-torn Europe, lots of beggars, ruins everywhere, a huge bomb crater in front of the hotel in Makarska, fortifications all around. So I think I will remember that for the rest of my life, and it made me believe that it would be nice if I could live a life without war."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 25.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:40:53
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I followed the rule of not allowing any secret contact

Jiří Sedmidubský, 2019
Jiří Sedmidubský, 2019
zdroj: Post Bellum

Jiří Sedmidubský was born on 27 May 1940 in Rovensko pod Troskami to parents Miloš and Ludmila, née Štučková. In his childhood he was a member of a scout troop, he was shaped by an anti-communist family environment, his father was a National Socialist. After graduating from the eleventh grade in Turnov in 1957, he was accepted to the University of Chemical Technology (VŠCHT), majoring in inorganic chemistry of silicates. He graduated there in 1962, then joined the Glass and Ceramics High School in Teplice as a teacher, where he worked for six years. At the beginning of August 1968 he moved with his family to Rakovník, where he was offered a job at the Rakovník Ceramic Works (RKZ). He experienced the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies, which was the impetus for the emigration of his brother Miloš to Austria. He worked his way up to the head of technical preparation of production, completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Technology, defended his scientific research assistantship and obtained the degree of CSc. He never joined the Communist Party. He and his wife Olga raised two sons, David and Tomáš. In 1974, before one of his business trips to the West, he was approached by State Security (StB). Jiří Sedmidubský confirmed that he would meet his brother and informed his superior about his contact with the StB. Due to his frequent foreign travel, StB targeted him again from 1978 onwards, when they began to investigate him as a candidate for cooperation. The witness repeatedly provided them with information about his work contacts abroad, and his co-workers and supervisors were said to know about everything. He never signed the cooperation, but until the 1990s he was unaware that the State Security officers had de facto carried out the so-called binding act, and thus he found himself on the list of secret collaborators. State Security removed him from the register in 1985 for passivity and low effectiveness. In 1994, the High Court in Prague confirmed that Jiří Sedmidubský had been listed illegally. After 1990, he became the director of RKZ and was also the founder and first chairman of the Silicate Union. In 2019 he lived in Rakovník.