Professor, Ing., CSc. Jaroslav Kopáček

* 1931

  • ”In front of the Hrušov miners’ colony and in front of our house, there was a strange thing. A slag heap with that old slag that had been mined some time ago. And the Ida Mine had a tunnel dug in it, with the typical wooden supports, and it led pretty deep in that heap. The idea was to build a cement bunker as the entrance and it should serve as an air raid shelter. When the sirens sounded, we all ran inside. The shelter could hold hundreds of people and it was a great experience. And thanks to this shelter, the bombing of Ostrava and the liberation fights did not did not get to us directly.”

  • “There was mud all around and one needed rubber boots to wade through that because some twenty or thirty metres from the construction site, there was the so-called concrete plant. You can imagine the mess when they would bring loads of concrete to the construction site. Our main piece of equipment was the so-called grey plague. Those were rubber boots which reached just above the ankles, they were made in ladies’ and gentlemen’s versions, all in rubber, with a zipper. People usually wore indoor slippers insode them. I would put them on and walk in those rubber boots through the mud to the bus stop, then I’d ride the bus to the theatre at the Smetanovo Square in Ostrava. At the back there, there was a bus station. When I came to school, all muddy, I went to the classroom and rinsed the rubber boots in the wash basin, then I put them again over the slippers and I wore this until I left for home. That’s what was called ‘grey plague’ because those rubber boots were of this grey-green colour.”

  • “It started like this: ‘So you’ve been for so long in the Party, you are such an experienced comrade, how could you let this and that happen and so on. And what’s your opinion on this or that, what did you sign and what did you not sign? And what about Dubček?‘ They asked me this sort of questions and then the committee concluded that I, as an experienced office holder, who has held party offices in both the faculty and university Party committees, I was involved in the rightist opposition when I, as a weathered comrade, should have seen through the trickery of such politics. And for this, the committee proposes that I be expelled from the Communist Party.”

  • “The only backside of our place was, and that was a unique feature, in the middle of the garden, just in front of the main entrance and on the axis of the park, a large steel mast stood. A funicular which transported sorted coal from the general area of Silesian Ostrava lead just across our garden. The coal was, I think, from the Terezie Mine, and the funicular lead across Heřmanice and Hrušov to the mine. And that’s where the large slag heap came from, now they are cleaning it up. So, there, just above our heads, the cable cars moved. Can you imagine all the noise and the dust falling off the open cars? And, twice or thrice it happened that the car slipped off the cables and fell close or straight away in our garden. Otherwise, we lived in a lovely compound, it was almost like a manor house.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ostrava, 06.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:57:08
  • 2

    Ostrava, 10.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:06:47
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 3

    Ostrava, 17.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:04:00
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I never let my grievances to take the upper hand

Jaroslav Kopáček in 1947
Jaroslav Kopáček in 1947
zdroj: Archiv Jaroslava Kopáčka

+ born on the 1st of March in 1931 in Ostrava – Vítkovice to a family of miners + until he was seven, he lived in Doubrava in the Karviná area + after the Těšín area was annexed by Poland in 1938, the family had to move away + witnessed the bombing and liberation of Ostrava in 1945 + as a member of the Union of Czechoslovak Youth, he eagerly participated in the Fučíkův odznak [Fučík’s badge] competition + studied mining machinery mechanics at the Technical University of Ostrava + taught at the Technical University, he specialised in hydraulics and pneumatics + he was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and a member of the University Party committee + in 1970, in the course of the normalisation interviews and purges, he was expelled from the Communist Party and fired from the Technical University + for twenty years, he worked as a research worker in the Heavy Industry Works in Dubnica nad Váhom in Slovakia + in 1990, he became professor of hydromechanics and hydraulic equipment + he started teaching at the Technical university again and he taught there until 2008