"After about a year, I was summoned to the Ministry of Education by two gentlemen - just like in Kafka's The Trial. If you've ever been there, in that Carmelite, it's really... there are these mysterious corridors. So I got there somewhere, and the two gentlemen took me to their table like this and said, 'You know, if you wouldn't keep complaining like this, if you would withdraw your complaint, we'll take care of it and you'll finish the school.' I didn't want to cause a conflict, so I said they should give me three days or a week to think about it, but even as I was walking down the stairs I was thinking, what a load of crap. So I wrote to them that of course I couldn't withdraw anything because I had no other choice. Well, the next year I got a letter from the Ministry of Education - a three-page letter signed by some lawyer that didn't seem to exist. It was signed Jiří Battěk, even with two 't's, so I asked Mr. Battěk if they had anyone like that in the family - nonsense, of course. And the ministry told me that there was no such person. Then when I finished school, I went looking for him. And the letter said that the dean and the rector of Charles University had violated socialist legality, that all their decisions had been revoked, and that I could finish school. At that time I thought it was a trick, because two of my friends in Olomouc had been expelled from school for the same reasons by not letting them take the state examinations. So I thought, 'Well, now they want me to study for six months, not be angry, study, and then they'll throw me out.' Because I wasn't a good student. But surprisingly enough, I finished."
"It happened once that they [the StB officers] came straight into the seminar, right in the middle, they just somehow pushed their way into the apartment. And Julius Tomin, who refused to communicate with them in any way, so they kind of... he survived it in some relative health. They just dragged him by the legs. They dragged him by his legs down the stone stairs, down his back..."
"In 1976 we founded an amateur theatre. And as chance would have it, at the very first performance, when it was not even original - we were doing plays by Jacques Prévert and Henri-Pierre Cami, probably influenced by Vashinka's Orpheus - there was trouble at the very first performance, someone turned us in. So then we fought it in various ways. In college, I tried to... ...in good faith, some SSM chairwoman promised us that they would set us up - after that trouble. But we went to some national show in Brno, where they didn't publicize it very well, so we did our own publicity on Czech [Street]. And there someone turned us in again, somone from Olomouc, some SSM potentate who was walking down Česká [street]. But we had a full hall in the evening, so it was beautiful. So we had these problems from the beginning, and with that came problems at the school. And then actually at the end of my second year they even withheld my index and somehow it looked bad, I just felt that I was going to be kicked out of school. So I told them I was moving to Prague. And strangely enough, they said... the vice-dean, a kind of State Security officer, told me that if I thought I'd be better off there... The next day I went to Prague and I settled it at Charles University. They said sure, but that I had to take all the exams, which I never had by the deadline. So I did them on the given date and I transferred [to Prague] to the same year."
Mgr. Ladislav Šenkyřík is a Czech literary translator from English. He was born on 19 August 1957 in Žarošice, South Moravia, into the family of František Šenkyřík, a postal clerk, and his wife Františka, who was a housewife. From the age of two he lived with his parents in Olomouc, he was the youngest of three siblings. He graduated from gymnasium and in 1976 he entered the Faculty of Science at Palacký University in Olomouc, majoring in numerical mathematics. He played sports, was interested in foreign rock music and jazz, contributed to the samizdat magazine Ječmínek and was active in the amateur theatre group Bernardýn, whose activities came under the scrutiny of State Security (StB). At the end of his second year, he was threatened with expulsion from school for political reasons, so in 1980 he transferred to Prague to study at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University (MFF UK). In Prague, he attended house seminars, which often ended in StB intervention. He also continued his samizdat activities and distributed the texts of Charter 77. After five years of studies, in 1982, he was not allowed to take the state final exams for political reasons, which he defended against by complaining to the Ministry of Education. In 1984 he was allowed to complete his studies. In order to avoid basic military service, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He worked as a night watchman and a boilerman, and later as a programmer in the Meta production cooperative. He studied English and passed the state exams. In the second half of the 1980s he translated Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s novel in his spare time. In 1988-1989 he participated in demonstrations (e.g. Palach Week, 17 November 1989). In the 1990s he began to translate as a full-time job. He has translated more than 100 books, and has long been particularly interested in the work of Ian McEwan. He is married and has three children. In 2023 he received the Ministry of Defense award for his participation in the Third Resistance. He was living in Prague at the time of filming in 2025.
The breaking off of the musical production of the WSS band at the unofficial jam-session of the Olomouc rockers in Náměšt' na Hané by members of the Public Security (Ladislav Šenkyřík in the foreground), 12 July 1975
The breaking off of the musical production of the WSS band at the unofficial jam-session of the Olomouc rockers in Náměšt' na Hané by members of the Public Security (Ladislav Šenkyřík in the foreground), 12 July 1975
Bernardýn Theatre - New Years card 1982. From left R. Goldmann, V. Burian, J. Dlabalová, L. Šenkyřík (behind the "lectern"), H. Tománková, O. Fogl, T. Tichák
Bernardýn Theatre - New Years card 1982. From left R. Goldmann, V. Burian, J. Dlabalová, L. Šenkyřík (behind the "lectern"), H. Tománková, O. Fogl, T. Tichák
