Jan Vyhnálek

* 1946

  • "At that time I was working as a truck driver for the Prague Poultry Factory. We had a party on 17 November and somebody heard it on a radio and spread the news. Of course, we didn't run there right away, but from the next day I went every day to rattle my keys. I also went to Letná, and I recorded some things on a tape recorder, but I never listened to it since then. Perhaps one day the time will come. I was delighted that something was finally happening. I wanted to start a Civic Forum at our work. I went around the offices and around the co-workers and everyone signed up to join. Some of them wondered, 'How come this one is in? He was with the Communists!' I said, 'Everyone has the right to change for the better.'"

  • "After midnight she woke me up and said, 'Honza, wake up, the Russians have attacked us!' I said to her: 'Don’t be silly!' She said: 'Come and listen to this!' So I listened to the radio and every quarter of an hour they announced an urgent message, that we were invaded by the Soviet troops…and so on. We went out in front of the house and we could hear planes flying above. Then we went to sleep and the next morning I woke up and smelled diesel. I said, 'What's that smell?' We went out in front of the house and tanks were lining up there."

  • "My grandfather not only translated the books, created a new language, but also wanted to compile the Kunstovný family tree. He got as far back as the end of the 17th century. But it led him to Germany, and that was fatal for him. Because he knew German well, he wrote there. The postmistress, at least according to what I learned from my mother, turned him in. They came to arrest him on 9 May 1945. According to the record, an armed officer walked him to the station and people beat him up to death in the street. But, as my mother told me, he was shot in a depot, which was then in Prague Košíří, Demartince. My mother also told me that she still had his citizen's identity that was shot through. Unfortunately, I never saw it. My parents, or rather my mother and grandmother, talked about it sometimes, but not very often as it caused them pain."

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    Jaroměř, 10.07.2021

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    délka: 01:25:35
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His grandfather was killed as a collaborator, then remembered as a hero

At the graduation ceremony in the 1980s
At the graduation ceremony in the 1980s
zdroj: Soukromý archiv

Jan Vyhnálek was born on 26 July 1946 in Prague. His father Heribert was a room painter and his mother Daruše was a housewife with four children. An important person for Jan was his maternal grandfather Otakar T. Kunstovný, who created an artificial language Serve. He sent and received letters from Germany because he was interested in the Kunstovný family tree. The postmistress denounced him as a collaborator and he was arrested on 9 May 1945. According to records, he was beaten by people in the street, but according to Jan‘s mother, he was shot. After elementary school, Jan trained as a carpenter and in 1963 began working as a parquet maker. In the 1960s he often went to the Semafor theatre, where his father was employed. He married in 1966 and had two daughters. On the morning of 21 August 1968, he saw tanks in front of his house as he was passing between them on his motorcycle on his way to work. In 1968 or 1969 he visited a relative in Austria and wanted to stay there. He became involved in the Velvet Revolution, and from 18 November 1989 he took part in demonstrations every day after work. He tried to found the Civic Forum at the Prague Poultry Factory, where he worked as a driver, but did not succeed. In 1992 he founded the SOS civic association. He was motivated by a family situation, when the authorities took his daughter‘s child away from her and entrusted her to relatives to raise. In 2002, he even unsuccessfully applied for asylum in Belgium and Sweden because of this situation. In 2021, he was living in Jívka in the Trutnov district.