Pavel Staněk

* 1927

  • “The Expo which had been in Brussels was moved to Kyiv. The Czechoslovak exposition was considered the best one back then. The entire exhibition was moved to Kyiv in 1960. There was a fashion show, the Ladislav Bezubka Orchestra, the music of the Castle Guard and all the things that were at the exhibition in Brussels. It was a huge success. The Russians were excited about it. There was a wise person there who came to see me and asked me: 'And if you wanted to go to Vienna, would you be allowed to go?' I answered I would not be. He said it was the same for him. He was a wise Russian who was not fooled by all the beautiful things on display. He knew that we had the same lack of freedom as they did."

  • “Seventeen of us from the entire Republic applied for that audition. The applicants were from Košice, Poprad, Bratislava. Everyone wanted to get to Prague. It was the most difficult audition that I have ever done. Moreover, it was unusual. The usual audition for a musical director means that they give you something to learn at home and then you are supposed to rehearse with an orchestra. And then they give you something that the orchestra knows about five minutes beforehand and you must conduct it. This is how the usual audition takes place. Whereas there it started with them giving us a manuscript paper and Vaculík said: 'Write, gentlemen.' Seventeen of them were there and almost all of them left. They did not want to do it, or they did not know how to do it."

  • “I know that it was on Friday, and we were removing German signs from shops. I remember that. Then I know that we built barricades. One of them was where I lived. I do not know anymore what the name of the street was, but I think that it is called Milady Horákové Street nowadays. I was standing at the barricade too as a boy. And when German cars with soldiers came from Letná from above, they would stop at the barricade, and we would lock the Germans in the cellars of the surrounding houses. I also remember that a German broke away from us and started running. Everyone started following him. I did not because I was not in the first row, but I heard them talking about it. He ran to a cellar somewhere and they trampled him to death there. Other Germans let us lock them. They handed their weapons in and were locked somewhere.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ostrava, 05.05.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:10:35
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Ostrava, 09.05.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 33:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

He was standing with a rifle on a barricade wishing the Germans would not come

Pavel Staněk in 1970s
Pavel Staněk in 1970s
zdroj: Pavel Staněk´s archive

Pavel Staněk was born on 3 June 1927 in a family of a postal clerk in Prague. His father died in a motorbike accident in 1936. Pavel Staněk attended grammar school in Holešovice, Prague during the war. At the end of the occupation, he and his schoolmates cleaned tracks and sorted packages at the post office. He helped rebels at barricades during the Prague uprising in May 1945. He graduated in double bass at Prague Conservatory after the war. He started to work as a bass player for the Czechoslovak Song & Dance Ensemble, but he soon got an offer to take over as a choirmaster. He then acted as a choirmaster and musical director in the Artistic Ensemble of the Ministry of the Interior where he worked instead of his basic military service. At the beginning of the 1960s, he conducted the orchestra in Divadlo na Fidlovaččce (Fidlovačka Theatre) in Nusle, Prague. He moved to Ostrava in 1963 where he got a job as the head of the Ostrava Radio Orchestra. He worked there for twenty-seven years. He conducted music for radio. As a composer and instrumentalist, he was successful both in the Czech Republic and abroad. Later in his retirement, he became blind as a result of glaucoma. He lived in Ostrava in 2023.