Jiří Olšaník

* 1953

  • "He was most disturbed by the basics: he felt like a soldier, and in that way he had the right to do so because he had fought, but the system, the regime demoted him, they made a private. He went through something, achieved a certain rank for taking part in the battle. That really bothered him and he put up a fight. So before 1968, when things started to free up a bit and people could speak up a bit more and do more (and in 1965 some were even being rehabilitated), my father hired a lawyer and put in a request to be rehabilitated too. Rehabilitation was hard, but it went well, I have the papers for that as well. Everything for him was cleared, it was written there from the legal points of view that everything had been fabricated, it is documented that it was construed in order to get rid of him. But it bothered him that they had written only positive things there, it was wrong – that they didn’t return his rank to him. They told him that he didn’t need it anymore. And that angered him the most. That he was still a private, even though now rehabilitated, but still without any rank to speak of. They didn’t reinstate his rank even from the police, nor from the war. He suffered from this till he died, he saw it as an injustice.”

  • “I was monitored, or better – our family was monitored continuously by the StB. The most striking was when we wanted to go somewhere, like even to Yugoslavia. Though they would let us go after lengthy obstructions, we would usually get a paper saying that it was not in the interest of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for us to go. It was simply impossible. I remember that even me, when my friend and I decided, when I was still a student, and when I saved up money for a vacation to Yugoslavia and my sister stood in a line for me in Prague so I would be able to get the trip at all, in the end I decided that that was enough already, and my friend also didn’t go. He got the exit permission, but they wrote on mine: ‘It is not in the interest of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for you to go anywhere.’”

  • “The were army exercises going on, and big test of mobilization, and thanks to some of the laws related to mobilizations, the communists took advantage of it and came to our apartment for our car keys, saying that they were confiscating our car due to the mobilization, without providing a replacement. The new car. It was the first and last time I saw my father cry. He just couldn’t endure it. Luckily, even in the army there were some people with some sense. My father packed a bag and went to the commanding office of the western army sector in Tábor, explained the situation, and one general told him that the army really hadn’t had the right to confiscate his car. The only thing was the car had already been used in the tank training area, that officers had already been driving around the tank training area in it, so my father had to go to the tank training area to go get it back. This is also one of the paradoxes of the times, when envy and the times were responsible for such ugly deeds.”

  • “When Germany finally capitulated, the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade started their way back to the Czechoslovak Republic. Their convoy traveled through the bombed-out Germany which my father told us was something horrible. The Germans could not comprehend that they had actually lost the war. You could see it in the moments when Germans made booby traps for them during their trek across Germany, everything that they were saying, how they screamed at them that they would be back and that they still hadn’t accepted defeat. He said it was full of hardships. In this fashion they made their journey all the way to Nepomuk and then ended up in Sedlčansko na Neveklovsko where the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade was decommissioned and where combat duties of that armored brigade came to an end.”

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Dad always stood up for what he believed in, and that made a lot of people angry

Jiří Olšaník, 1973
Jiří Olšaník, 1973
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jiří Olšaník was born on 22 May 1953 in Tábor. His mother Marie, née Pilíková, was a homemaker, while his father Josef was a painter by trade. His sister Jana was born in 1947. The family’s fate was guided by the fact that that Josef Olšaník had fought on the western front during the Second World War. Alongside his allies in the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade he fought in the siege on the Nazi-occupied fortress of Dunkirk from fall 1944 to May 1945. After Germany’s capitulation, Josef returned home. His homeland welcomed him after his liberation with open arms and honors, but already by 1954 the communists had prosecuted him for sedition, he was sentenced, demoted, and dishonored to the end of his days. For Jiří, his father was a role model, even though he would have problems in the unfree Czechoslovakia on his account. He was limited to studying a trade, underwent a lot of pressure during his military service, during which he was convinced to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and he was not allowed to travel freely. His entire family was tracked by the StB, which threatened to force them out of their apartment. In 1977, Jiří Olšaník got married and moved to Komárov u Napajedel. Here, following the November revolution of 1989, he contributed to the founding of the Civic Forum. He made a living repairing electronic appliances. He was a lifetime lover of sports – he rowed, skied, and cycled. In 2020, he trained as a skater and took part in international competitions.