Petr Mamula

* 1957

Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
Progress: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
 
1x
  • "So imagine that I went to Krakovská Street for an interrogation about a month after that. I've never been so scared in my life. I thought to myself: Jesus Christ, now they're going to jump out of somewhere and beat me up here. Man, nothing. I just came in for interrogation and there was a policeman and he said, 'So how was it?' I said, 'They were hitting him.' - 'What were you doing?' I said, 'I ran in there and pushed them away.' - 'Yeah, okay, sign it.' They just wanted to get rid of it. I was so lucky. Well, I got kicked out of Lucerna. Like, I was fired... I was told to go."

  • "I was told that I should go to university, and of course I thought about it too, even though I wasn't a particularly study type, I guess. And I didn't get into university. My cadre profile was terrible. First of all, because of my parents, and secondly, when I got my cadre materials after the revolution, the reference was... Some architect Skalík wrote there: 'He hates the socialist system, doesn't respect the authority of teachers and is not capable of independent work in professional subjects.' That´s what he wrote there. So I had it from all sides... He even wrote a denunciation against me - it was all in those cadre materials - an reference, not a denunciation, a caretaker."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 28.11.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:36:59
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Praha, 16.01.2025

    (audio)
    délka: 01:49:23
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I don‘t understand people who can say that things were better under the Communists

Petr Mamula, early 1960s.
Petr Mamula, early 1960s.
zdroj: witness´s archive

Petr Mamula was born on 28 September 1957 in Prague, where he grew up in Žižkov with his maternal grandparents. His grandfather was a white guard who managed to emigrate to Czechoslovakia in 1920. There he was convicted as a Ukrainian nationalist in 1948, but the real reason was his refusal to join the Communist Party. Father Zdenek Mamula left the party in January 1968. Petr Mamula graduated from a secondary technical school, but he did not have a good cadre reference for university. He started working in restaurant services, which brought him an above-average income. He was willing to join the Communist Party for promotion, but his admission was not approved. He tried to emigrate, which he succeeded in doing only just before the Velvet Revolution. He took part in the Palach´s Week protests and organised the signing of the petition Several Words. After the Velvet Revolution he worked in a family business in advertising and promotion. He has lived in Prague all his life.