Ladislav Dlabal

* 1968

  • "As soon as I returned from the military service and the borders opened, I borrowed a Škoda from my dad. The Škoda was old, battered and scuffed. Since gasoline was cheaper here, I bought a canister of gasoline, exchanged what I could for marks. I hit the road. I was in Germany for about a month. At that time, France and Belgium were not yet open. That was all during my trip. I traveled Germany completely, I drove through it for about a month. That Škoda was going about as fast as the trucks. As embarrassing as it was, I was quite ashamed of it. That Škoda car didn't sound very good when I drove through a German city, so the Germans still weren't used to the Czechs and our Škoda cars. It was a very special car for them, I felt it made them smile.”

  • "We had political training in the military service. I did not attend any political training. It was led by a sergeant, a terribly passionate communist. He was probably shorter than me, so he didn't even force me to do it, maybe once or twice. I remember one time he called us together and told us, it was in the fall, that there was a pamphlet called Several Sentences and that we should be careful if we went on vacation, that we shouldn't sign it, that it was disgusting thing. We are a state of workers and peasants, and that ought to remain the same forever. There is a group of people here who are trying to break this state, and one of them is Václav Havel. Finally, after telling us about it for an hour, he imprudently asked if there is anyone who thinks that Václav Havel is right and that there is something to those Few Sentences. I don't know why he asked that. A fellow soldier was sitting next to me, his name was Smetana, he was from somewhere in Milevsko. He asked me: 'So, shall we get up?' I was sure that I would get up, so we both got up."

  • "When there was a velvet revolution, I was in the army. It was interesting for me there, because you met a whole range of people from Czechoslovakia. It was a bit of a culture shock for me. I remember that I was at the reception department and there was a guy from Slovakia and he couldn't sign down; he could only make three crosses. He said he was a shepard. I really don't know if he went to school or not, or if he was in the first or second year. Or the people who were from Slovakia and spoke Ruthenian, that was also very interesting. I remember him saying: 'There's frozen water flowing here.' It was so strange who you could meet. I also remember that boys from Slovak villages asked me: 'And you don't have any goats in Prague?' I say: 'No, we have no goats.' - 'Not even sheep? You don't have sheep?' I say we don't. 'That's not possible.' They couldn't understand it at all. They looked at me as if I was from another world."

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    Praha, 20.12.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 36:09
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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If you work hard on yourself, you can make every dream come true

Ladislav Dlabal (en)
Ladislav Dlabal (en)
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Ladislav Dlabal was born on March 12, 1968 in Prague, where he lived his entire life. He went to primary school in Strašnice. He refused to submit to communism, which got him into trouble several times as a student. After completing primary education, he entered the secondary school of communications. He was not without problems there either. In the second year, he received a demeanor for alleged „anti-socialist attitudes“. He did his basic military service in Volary in Šumava, later he moved to the village of Stod near Pilsen, where he worked as a telephone mechanic. The Velvet Revolution caught up with him in the army. He studied history at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University (UK) and political science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, UK. He worked at the Diderot publishing house and participated in the creation of many entries in the Diderot Encyclopedia - especially in the field of political science and history. He translated several professional publications from English. For more than ten years he taught at Mikulova Primary School in Prague. In 2022 he lived in Prague.