Stanislav Křeček

* 1938

  • "That was our store that we had, the one with textiles and those fashion accessories that don't exist anymore. When the Jews were going to the camps, they just first went to the assembly camps here in Holešovice, so my parents helped them, gave them some clothes, gave them some things that they had. And somebody denounced us for doing that, so they closed our shop and we had to move out of Prague, which was a relatively mild punishment for that time. Just an order to move out of Prague, we had to move out."

  • "This is an example of how the law only works when it is violated just a little. When the law is violated massively, it doesn't work. When I kill someone, it's murder. When hundreds of people are shot on the street, the law doesn't work anymore. And that's the case of the building code, if you have a thousand of buildings built illegally, you're hardly going to remove a thousand, the bulldozer's not going to come to take it all down. If you have just one illegal building, it can come and tear it down."

  • "Then somehow I thought I wouldn't be a scientist, so I wanted to be an artist, so I studied art school here in Prague at Vinohrady, on Hollar Square. I was also kind of into that, and I mainly did sculpture and drawing and painting. And at the same time I graduated from law school, and the art school came in handy because after law school I joined the court, the District Court for Prague 5, I was a judge. And after '68 I was thrown out because I wrote a lot of articles for Charles University, which was a kind of student magazine, and for Studentské listy and Lidové noviny. And the communists collected these articles and fired me on that basis. So the art school came in handy, I was a freelance artist. I made a living for a while, making posters for Čedok and things like that."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 20.03.2025

    (audio)
    délka: 01:13:17
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The law only works when it is violated just a little

Stanislav Křeček in 2025
Stanislav Křeček in 2025
zdroj: Post Bellum

Stanislav Křeček was born on 20 May 1938 in Prague. His parents ran a textile shop in Sokolská Street and helped Jews who were leaving for the transports during World War II. However, someone turned them in and the family had to move out of Prague and lived in the village of Zvánovice. The father joined the resistance and played an active role during the Prague Uprising. After the war, the family was allowed to return to Prague, but a few years later the shop was confiscated by the communists. He graduated from the secondary school of geology and then from an art school. He graduated from law school and started working as a judge. During the normalisation period he was dismissed from his job because of articles that were not liked by the communist ideology. For some time he supported himself by painting posters for Čedok and other works. After the Velvet Revolution, he returned to advocacy. He joined the Czech Social Democratic Party and served as a deputy for some time. Since 2020, he has served as ombudsman. In 2025, Stanislav Křeček lived in Prague.