Ing. Jan Lukšík

* 1950

  • "They also put in a connection to the year 1968, because they kept asking about a photograph - I have it here, the photograph - because it's a photograph of the tramp group and there are some representatives of the town there. And I don't know how they found out, but they knew the photograph existed, and they asked about it several times." - "And there you are, in that photo?" - "There I am in the photo." - "Maybe that's why they wanted to identify the people in the photo." - "I don't know, they knew, but they probably didn't have it." - "And now they've summoned you, and that was to State Security in Liberec?" - "Well, to the Liberec office." - "What did they want from you?" - "Well, an explanation." - "And what did that mean in this case? Like were you there and there that day, who was there and such?" - "Yes, it was basically done calmly. It wasn't like I was interrogated really harshly or anything, but it was more like a kind of psychological pressure." - "Was that repeated afterwards?" - "It was repeated about two more times." - "Did they threaten you with any punishment?" - "Well, they threatened me with not getting a job."

  • "There was an outright battle, a battle between the police and the people of Liberec. There's a street called Pražská Street, a kind of a commercial street from the town hall down, and they chased us down that street with batons and we picked up ammunition down there again, because coincidentally the old quarter was being shot up at that time, so there were a lot of rubble, so we chased them up Pražská again." - "Was that really the fight?" - "We really fought that, I still have the scar from the rubber bullet on my leg." - "Did they shoot?" - "They shot rubber bullets at us, but they were our policemen, our militiamen."

  • "We had been at a party and we were walking home at night and the tanks were coming. So we didn't know what was going on at first, but of course we found out very quickly. They were actually coming from the Liberec post office past the town hall and rolling towards Prague. So we actually stayed at the town hall from that morning. And then there was the crash with the tank." - "What happened there?" - "There just somehow the tank caught the arcade in that square, and of course the flat above it fell down and it buried some people. Ambulances were going back and forth. It was a big mess." - "Which square?" - "That's the square by the town hall, I don't know what it's called now, I don't know." - "This was an unfortunate coincidence?" - "Well, I guess it was, because there was a narrow alley that they were just driving by actually and somehow caught that arcade there. It buried the people there and of course there were already some injuries. Then there was a moment, boys were throwing, there was scaffolding, the town hall was being repaired at that time, and they were throwing plants or things like that from the scaffolding on top of the tanks and the GAZ vehicles that were going. And one of the Russian fools took a machine gun and turned it over the square. That's where my friend died."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    délka: 25:16
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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    Příbram, 06.03.2024

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    Praha, 02.06.2025

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Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

After the invasion, I thought about running away. But for my parents‘ sake, I stayed

Jan Lukšík, 1957
Jan Lukšík, 1957
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Jan Lukšík was born on 22 September 1950 in Liberec to Růžena and Josef Lukšík. His parents ran a pub in Kamenice and Neratovice for several years. Then the family returned to Liberec again. Jan Lukšík graduated from a two-year course at a secondary technical engineering school. He lived through the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Liberec. He participated in anti-occupation demonstrations and witnessed many dramatic events. On 24 August he also attended the funeral of local victims. On the one-year anniversary of the occupation, he got into a fight with the riot police in Liberec. Soon after, he was summoned to State Security (StB). He went through about two or three interrogations. From 1969 he worked at Pozemní staveb Liberec as a locksmith. From 1974 he worked as head of maintenance and then head of the energy operation at the Hamr Uranium Mines. In 1976 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). He completed his secondary school education and graduated from the University of Economics in Prague. In 1980 he became an economist at the new engineering plants in Příbram. He stayed there until 1991. After the Velvet Revolution he worked as a marketing manager and cooperated with a number of companies. In 2000-2007 he was the editor-in-chief of the popular science magazine 21st Century. In 2025 he was living in Příbram.