Jaromír Stojan

* 1929

  • "Když jsem tam byl třeba, to bylo v Jáchymově, tam měli velký teploměr a třeba 33 stupňů mrazu. My jsme z těch dolů byli úplně promočený. Měli jsme sice takové fáračky, klobouk dozadu a přilby a nebo jenom přilby. Tam všude tekla voda, tak většinou jsme byli promočený. Když jsme vyjeli ven, tak jestli ty esenbáci ze sebe hráli tak blbý, nebo byli blbý, ale oni nedokázali spočítat 150 lidí, to někdy trvalo půl, třičtvrtě hodiny. Pochopitelně nám všechno zmrzlo. Když jsme se potom měli rozejít, tak jsme se museli napřed ohnout v kolenou, abychom ty kolena mohli vůbec ohnout. Tak to bylo nejhorší."

  • "Já jsem věděl, za prvé mi ho bylo strašně líto a věděl jsem, že je to provokace. To mě napadlo hned. Hned jsem si říkal, proč mě, i když mlátili, tak vždycky tak, aby to nebylo vidět. Jestli mě chtěli ukázat tomu tajemníkovi, a tomu by to určitě nevadilo. Na mně nebyla vidět žádná, protože když mě Zděněk fackoval, tak přes ručník, nebo se bál, že by mu vzali otisky. Co já vím, naprostý nesmysl."

  • "Kdybych měl tu možnost, a nemusel se ničeho bát, tak bych se s ním vůbec nebavil. Představil bych se mu, kdy jsme se setkali, kdyby zapomněl. A pak bych mu plivnul do xichtu, ne do obličeje, ale do xichtiu. Otočil bych se a šel pryč."

  • "Nejhorší moment právě byl, když mi stahoval čelo, právě tenhleten mladej Zdeněk. To už se mi začaly dělat mžitky před očima. Za chvíli začnu ztrácet vědomí a kdo ví, jestli se proberu. To byl ten moment, když jsem se svým způsobem loučil se životem."

  • “One thing was surprising to me from the very beginning: people who had been collaborating with the Germans, and everyone knew about this, and they were even summoned to court; these people joined the Communist Party, and immediately all this got erased, all got lost and these people suddenly became as dangerous and influential as they had been during the war. And many people haven’t even realized that, but since I had already known something of how it was in Russia back then, I certainly didn’t like it.”

  • “I came to the post office in Neratovice, and there was a sign that the side entrance should be used. There was another door, so I went there. Suddenly three guys stormed out and grabbed my arms. They dragged me to where a Tatra T8 stood ready. They threw a sack over my head and crammed me under the seat, two sat next to me, and one at the front. The car started moving. I didn’t know what was going on, it was no use resisting, as a war child I was wise enough in this respect, and thus I pretended I fell asleep. They noticed and they began speaking more freely, observing: ´Man, he’s fallen asleep.´ The other replied: ´No wonder. When one works outside all day, one gets tired. We’ll wake him up afterward, anyway.´ We kept going and I noticed that the fumes from the engine were getting inside the car, and that we were still in Neratovice, for there were many bends on the road. Then we drove a straight road and in the evening we stopped by some wood. They gave me a shove, removed the sack from my head and I could see we were in a wood. They introduced themselves as national socialist partisans and accused me of being a rotter for working for the communists. They tied me to a tree and in front of me there was a hole dug out. They said I would end up in that hole, that they have dug it out for me. It may sound paradoxical, but even in a situation like this, I looked at the hole and said that it was way too small for me. I got a threshing to remember it. I argued that they were making it all up. This went on for some thirty or forty-five minutes and they said that they would take me back, but that if I said a word about it to anyone, they would murder my entire family. I have to say they looked they would be up to it.”

  • “My name is Jaromír Stojan and I chose Prague to be my place of birth. I was born near the Vltava in Klimentská Street, and since that time I have been a nature’s child. My father was a train supervisor and my mother was a dental nurse. I had one brother, but he is no longer alive. Then we moved to Libiš and where I lived all the time before my moving here to Havlíčkův Brod. I went to school in Libiš.”

  • “A week or two have passed, I was at work, and all of a sudden the very same Tatra T8 appeared. They went in, and suddenly they came back and said they were from StB. They arrested me. At work they found cartridges which were there from the war, and they began claiming that I was arming myself, and nonsense like that. I insisted that the cartridges had got there even before I started working there. They took me to Neratovice, to a so-called Culture House, but they didn’t behave in a cultured way. An interrogation started. When I had been tied to that tree, I had told them various things which were not true and which they couldn’t verify anywhere. And I told them that I knew who they were, that we had been in that forest long enough for me to know them, and that this was all a farce. They charged at me, and I realized that this was no argument for them and that I couldn’t use it to my defence. Interrogations followed, they claimed that I had been shooting at the deputy, a former communist secretary, etc. And I was telling them that if I – a former national defence instructor – had been shooting at him, he would have been no longer alive. I offered them to take a look at my records to see that it couldn’t have been me, but they had them. They stopped it. And the officers kept changing constantly. They always came up with some nonsense or fiddlesticks, and they were always taking turns. I was being interrogated from the morning of April 14 to the evening of the following day.”

  • “I like to recall this story. We stood for a roll call and I was the thirteenth person in the front row. A crooked lieutenant came there and ordered: ´First row two steps ahead.´ He asked the first guy: ´Why are you here?´ And the guy answered that he didn’t know. ´Just wait, you bastard, we’ll show you!´ He approached the second guy and told him he had to be a hell of a criminal if he didn’t know what he had done. And I, as was my custom, thought: just wait till you come to me, you’ll get flabbergasted. He approached me, asked me what I was there for, and I said: ´Comrade lieutenant, just trifles – anti-state activity, I was imprisoned for two years, but that’s all.´ And I expected this would knock him over. And he was looking at me, he stood some three steps from me, and then he came closer and said: ´Don’t be afraid, we’ll not do any harm to you here.´”

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Serve your homeland firmly!

Jaromir Stojan (*1929)
Jaromir Stojan (*1929)
zdroj: ABS

Jaromír Stojan was born February 21, 1929 in Prague. His father Jan worked as a train supervisor and his mother Helena was a dental nurse. Apart from Jaromír they had one more son. The family moved from Prague to Libiš, where Jaromír attended elementary school and where he lived basically until he got released from prison. He attended a higher elementary in Neratovice and then trained as a gardener. During his vocational training, he was gradually learning details about life in the USSR from his boss, who came from Ukraine, and this formed Jaromír‘s opinions after the war. The entire family survived the war. Like his father, after the war Jaromír Stojan joined the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party and his mature political opinions eventually led to a conflict with a local district communist secretary of the Mělník region. Stojan was appalled when he saw former collaborationists and racketeers becoming acquitted of all charges in exchange for joining the Communist Party. In one political meeting he openly opposed the district secretary and this event marked all his subsequent life. In spring 1949 he was made to come to a post office under a false pretext and there attacked by StB agents, who pretended to be National Socialist partisans. He was taken to a forest and tied to a tree in front of a dug hole. Only a week after, the same people came for him again, this time officially. According to the materials from the Archives of Security Forces he was arrested on April 28, 1949 (he himself probably mistakenly speaks of April 14). The investigators charged him with armed attack on the above mentioned communist secretary. He was also charged with possession and dissemination of pamphlets, and with the intention to illegally leave the country. StB arrested his parents as well - he met them beaten in a staged meeting in front of the interrogation room - and probably also his brother. After a lengthy detention awaiting trial he was transported to custody in Prague-Pankrác. He was tried in the trial with the group Josef Vyhňák and co. - he has never seen some of the eight persons who were sentenced together with him. The principal trial of the State Court in Prague took place on September 27-28, 1949. Jaromír Stojan was sentenced to two years of heavy jail and the loss of civil rights for three years for the crime of plotting against the republic. The same court acquitted his father Jan Stojan. Several days after the trial, Jaromír Stojan was escorted to camp Vykmanov, where he was welcomed by a scene of a prisoner shot in an attempt at escape. Subsequently he got to camp Barbora, where he was going down the mine, but thanks to a friendly room leader he later got a less demanding position of a fitter. He managed to survive a cave-in, as well as a threat of leg amputation when he suffered frostbite during one of the many roll calls. His fellow prisoner roommates helped him again, and his leg was eventually saved. Half a year before his release he was offered to collaborate with StB, which carried a promise of an immediate return home. He didn‘t succumb to the temptation. After his return from imprisonment he was surprisingly offered a position of a supervisor of a state-owned gardening company in Husinec. When he ascertained the real state of affairs, he discovered there was a financial shortfall in the company, which would have probably resulted in another sentence for him, and he turned the offer down. He eventually became employed by a construction company in Pilsen. In November 1951 he began a basic military service in the combat antiaircraft unit in České Budějovice. The commander often made use of his experience from the national defence and he repeatedly postponed Stojan‘s transfer to the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). Eventually, Stojan was sent to PTP in Mimoň. He continued with the PTP after another transfer to Stříbro, from which he was a transferred to Slovakia to a military recreation facility in the Tatras Mountains after disagreements with the commander. The commander wanted to get rid of him, and he thus provided Stojan with half a year of a comfortable military service. Stojan completed his service with the PTP in Prague, where he participated on the construction of hotel Internacional. After his return in 1954 he moved to Havlíčkův Brod and began working in a local factory producing files. He was asked to join the Communist Party, but he obviously refused. In the evenings he studied a secondary industrial school and he began working as a standardizer, later as a tool setter and planner. He married in 1952, but the marriage didn‘t last. With his second wife he raised two daughters. In 1968 he feared that the Soviets wouldn‘t tolerate the „thawing“ in Czechoslovakia, and he was not mistaken. Although he didn‘t file for rehabilitation, in 1969 a rehabilitation proceeding began with his case. His troubles started after he truthfully testified in court about how he had been attacked by the StB agents. A high StB official demanded that he take back his testimony, which Stojan refused. His case was eventually investigated and this high ranking StB official then told him that his testimony had been true and that consequences had been made of it. In the period of Charter 77, Jaromír Stojan was asked to sign it as well, which he however refused, saying that even former communists were among the Charter‘s supporters, and that the document itself did not fight the communist ideology, but defended human rights within this system. Freedom came for Jaromír Stojan in November 1989. He joined the Confederation of Political Prisoners, which made him a delegate in the civil safety commission; he also became actively involved in the local chapter in Havlíčkův Brod where he worked as a treasurer, and also as the chairman for the past five years. At the same time he is a member of the all-state committee of the Confederation. All his life he has been faithful to his credo: „Serve your homeland firmly, as a faithful guard, give your soul, give your heart, give her all you have.“