JUDr. Jan Vůjtěch

* 1930

  • "After graduating from high school I got into the Faculty of Law, that is, I started in 1949. For me, these certain difficulties arose at a time when I was not used to the fact that one cannot say what one thinks and that one has to adapt or even disguise oneself in a certain way. I had more or less been quite naive in that sense all my life, and it began to show itself strongly at that Law School, because at one seminar in our club I gave a paper on Marxism in connection with other disciplines. I basically took it to mean that the Marxist class theory is very similar to what the theory of Nazism and fascism advocates, because that theory is based on the teachings of Nietzsche, who argues that there are two groups of people - the superman and the rest of the population, that is, the slaves. And similarly, it is actually the case in Marxism, where it is argued that the chosen class that preaches progress and is the only one worth coddling are the proletarians. And all others are more or less inferior people in the sense that they must be restrained, trained and corrected." Translate by DeepL

  • "I can't say that I can rank myself on one side with any militants against communism in this direction. On the other hand, I see my whole fate as significant in that from the moment I picked up reason I saw how wrong Marxism was. My study of philosophy here also confirmed me in that. I have always criticized Marxism in particular, for example I had more reservations about the dialectical materialism, of course I had reservations about the historical one. There I knew, because I knew the underpinnings of what was wrong with it. Of course the question of class, there it was clear. So I think that what I see as my destiny as such - which I'm not claiming, I'm happy in a way, it's just that it's giving me wrinkles now, the politics of the moment - that I see everything now as very orderly and purposeful and I think that all the things that have befallen me, like the petering out or the problems at work after that, that they're things that were more or less lawful and it just wouldn't be right for me not to experience them. I think it all seems perfectly natural to me." Translate by DeepL

  • "When we entered those quarters after the basic training at the place where the President Gottwald mine was in Horní Suchý near Karviná, where I spent the 25 months afterwards, we were told that we had to prepare ourselves to be the dregs of society, not to be classified as respectable, and that we would be treated as such. That we were here for re-education but also for punishment, and that each one of us knew why we were here and so on. So it was the psychological thing of the thing. And the other was that we had to get short haircuts, we got uniforms that were more or less not military, they were tattered uniforms that were still worn by German soldiers in World War II. We, for example, were each given an individual piece of that clothing, including shoes, so it wasn't our size that was taken into account at all, but the fact that we would be resourceful and change things so that everyone could get along. That was the other thing, the military thing." Translate by DeepL

  • "The worst work in the mine was mining in the front section of the mine. The job there consists in mining corridors that delimit the space for the coal mining. And these corridors then widen and miners must build props to support the ceiling. But when you mine there you have to destroy the props there. That was the worst job because it was very dangerous. Bad situation was when the ceiling was not falling after destroying the prop. The pressures of the soil in the mine 1200 metres deep were accumulating and it was clear that it must fall uncontrollably. Then it was irrelevant that you have some props left there, because it just cracked and everybody down there was gone. So for us it was horror to go to places like this. The civilian miners refused to ge there but we were given order to mine it."

  • "Truth is that I was not brave. This episode and whole my life show that I was not dissident. But I never hesitated to say what is right or what I think is right. I was always upset by the marxist philosophy. It caused many problems to me when I was showing that this philosphy is not right and that it is not even ethical. I always said something like this and it made troubles not that I helped to destroy the regime. I was protesting because I didn't agree with it. That is why I think the PTP army service was quite natural for me and would be strange if was not there."

  • "When I was speaking about the watering I was also at the time allowed to go from the mine and into the mine freely without permission. I remember one day I was taking shower before entering the mine and some miners brought a box in the bathroom and started to clean it. In the box was a fellow miner crushed by the steel conveyor belt. They just put him in the small box and cleaned it in the bathroom. There was the smell of mothballs which I hate since then. And I realized at the moment that I am going to the mine to replace him."

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Sometimes, there was a black banner flying in there

Contemporary portrait of a witness
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zdroj: witness archive

Jan Vůjtěch was born on 8 June 1950 in Prague. Following his father‘s example, after WW II he went to study law at Prague‘s Faculty of Law. However in the final year of his studies he was expelled for his political opinions and instead was drafted to do his military service. As a politically unreliable person, he was assigned to the so-called Auxiliary Technical Battalions and sent to work at a coal mine in Silesia named after President Gottwald. Here he worked as a miner at the shaft and later, being an „intellectual skilled in reading and writing“, as a manager ensuring the miners‘ material well-being. Before the end of his service he sustained a leg injury. In 1954 he returned to civilian life, finished his law studies and worked in the state Enterprise for Foreign Trade. At the same time he also managed to graduate from philosophy and psychology. After the August 1968 invasion he worked first as a garbage collector and later as a scientific researcher. At the end of 1989 he became active in the Civic Forum and then worked as head of the advisors and a clerk in the Czech Parliament. In 2003 he went to retirement. Ever since he has been active as a lawyer in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions Association, helping its past members file successful compensation claims.