“It was a hardboard with measures two seventy times one hundred and twenty. I wrote: WE WANT FREE ELLECTIONS, WE DO NOT WANT THE POLICE STATE. And something else. I'll get the picture somewhere. Someone took a picture of it while they were removing it with a crane. I'll try to find the picture somewhere. My wife agreed, so I hung it very high from the top window that it was impossible to take it down. By the time I was hanging the banner, people were already blowing their horns. Simply amazing. However, within half an hour the mayor called me to take it down. He explained that it was written with “we”, and it sounds like the inhabitants of Zvole, and he disagrees with it and wants me to take it down. I told him that “we” meant me, my wife and our baby, and that it would hang there. In a little while the police arrived to take it off. I told them I'd take it down, but they had to sign the paper, that it was at the command of this and that man, and that I would then sue that man. They left and arrived again in half an hour and that I should go with them, because I do not want to remove it. As I walked, all the cars stopped, made an aisle, and everyone was blowing the car´s horns. They took me to Zábřeh, and as I left, they had a crane ready and they took it down right away.”
“We were completely hammered that day. Me, Franta, the bassist and Ficnar were on the way home. Frenky thought of nothing better but yelling: 'We want free elections! Do not vote for the National Front candidates!´ By the Perla factory, a gate-keeper called the cops. Then, we split up at Skalička. Suddenly we came to a turn-off and there were cops already waiting. They drove us to the police station and questioned us until the morning. They were battering and wanted to fit it for political activity. At eight, the chief came in and he saved us because he told them to stop being silly, that we were eighteen-year-old guys and ïf we were sentenced it would be the end of our lives. He told them to report it as a riot. Then, each one of us got a condition. I think it was half a year for two years with a fine of ten percent of a salary.”
“We lay down in a forest with a neighbor of the same age and while the tanks were going up to Maletín we were firing at them with an air rifle. They could have shot us right away. I know that the one who got it, stopped and spun and we lay down. We fired from a small forest at a distance of ten meters for each tank.”
Stanislav Stojaspal was born on July 10, 1958 in Moravská Třebová. Until he was five years old, his family lived in Třebařov village. Later they moved to the local part of Zábřeh - Skalička in 1963. In his youth he joined the so-called „Máničky“(“ a term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in the communist regime) and from 1974 to 1981 he played the electric guitar in the music band Venus, which at private events played mainly the songs of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. He also went with his friends to festivals where bands, which were banned by the communist regime, performed. He had experienced the dragnets of public security forces at those festivals several times. During his two years military service from 1977 to 1979 in Prešov, he was summoned several times to be interviewed by a prosecutor for serious offenses. While playing the songs of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin on a radio station at the military airport in Prešov, he was even transported by a helicopter to Ukraine to be for questioned there. He was also involved in anti-regime activities.
Because of the samizdat, a search warrant took place in his flat several times, he was attending demonstrations and promoting the petition Several sentences. On November 20, 1989, three days after a brutal intervention against demonstrators in Národní třída, he placed a large banner on the gable of his house in Zvole, right by the main route Šumperk - Olomouc, with a sign calling for free elections. Despite the pressure from the chairman of the local national committee and police forces, he refused to remove it, so he ended up in an examination room in nearby Zabreh. The following hours he listened to threats of imprisonment for several years. It was thanks to the demonstration of approximately 20 activists under the office windows what finally forced the members of the Public Security to release Stanislav Stojaspal. Then he participated in revolutionary happenings. He was printing and distributing information leaflets and he was sounding meetings. Also, he became one of the founding members of the Zábřeh Civic Forum. In 2019 Stanislav Stojaspal still lived in the village of Zvole.
Stanislav Stojaspal at the military service in Prešov in August 1978, when he and other soldiers cut their hair off as a protest against the tenth anniversary of the occupation
Stanislav Stojaspal at the military service in Prešov in August 1978, when he and other soldiers cut their hair off as a protest against the tenth anniversary of the occupation
Zábřeh „Máničky“. on the right Stanislav Stojaspal (a term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
Zábřeh „Máničky“. on the right Stanislav Stojaspal (a term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
Zábřeh „Máničky“ (A term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
Zábřeh „Máničky“ (A term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
Zábřeh „Máničky“ (A term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
Zábřeh „Máničky“ (A term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
Zábřeh „Máničky“ (A term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
Zábřeh „Máničky“ (A term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist regime)
