Major Jiří Jícha

* 1957

  • "I was chairman of the union organisation at the time, which was a vacant position. [Miroslav] Plíšek was put into the infirmary to rehabilitate himself, so I discussed it with him many times. And any misconduct? How do you look for [it] in a guy who's been serving for six months? It's easy to say today, being a police officer after thirty-nine years of service. Inexperienced boy. He couldn't have acted any other way. Nowadays, they'd send ten, fifteen people against a defector who would... If he fired once, they'd eliminate him from a safe place and take cover. And it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. Unfortunately, Miloš Kukla's kidneys failed in the hospital. And after his parents visited him - he normally talked to them and looked forward to coming home - he died a day or two after they visited him in the hospital. Then, I attended his funeral. Together with Plíšek and other soldiers. There was also this thing that nobody was able to tell Plíšek that Kukla had died. And now the unit was rehearsing the honour salute for the funeral. Plíšek heard the salvos and said, 'Kukla died.' And they said, 'Don't be silly.' Then the doctor told him because the professional soldiers were so cowardly, they didn't tell Plíšek."

  • "The guard checking the entrance noticed an old man walking past the barracks, in the field, one hundred and fifty, two hundred meters from the barracks. Whereupon he reported it to the unit supervisor, who wanted to send him there. Fortunately, the elder of the unit, a sergeant-major named Král, was there, and he told him not to go crazy, not to send a man with a bayonet. So he sent Lance Corporal Plíšek and Private Kukla from the guard. It was an armed guard equipped with sixty bullets. They had bullets in the chamber. The weapon was only secured. The two armed men went to check on the so-called grandpa. I'm not sure at all... I don't think they knew they were going after a military defector! Kukla served two months. Plíšek for six months. Completely inexperienced soldiers. Plíšek was an instructor in the non-commissioned officers' school, Kukla was a soldier who was only preparing to become a commander."

  • "At the apprenticeship, at the age of eighteen, I was offered to study at an industrial engineering high school. It was conditional on my signing an application for the Party because they needed working-class cadres. Engineers had a problem, for example. Engineers applied to join the Party, but they couldn't accept an engineer unless five workers joined. They had a quota for that. At eighteen, you didn't think about it. My parents were in the Party, so I signed it. I wanted to study. I wanted to make something of myself, like every young person. You had different ideals. Nowadays, you look at it very differently. I didn't know about the 1950s until I was at SNB College, where Associate Professor Laurinec gave me a text, I think in my third year, about the Slánský trial. I had to read it in his office. He knew that he could trust me, so he gave me this book, saying: 'So that you know that those times were not so rosy.' CUT I found the speech of Prosecutor Urválek before the state court completely incomprehensible. That speech is well-known. Then, what was incomprehensible to me in that book was how these people confessed. I didn't find that out until I read Arthur London's confession, how they were treated. The book didn't say why. How can someone come forward and confess to being an imperialist and Zionist agent?"

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    Praha, 15.11.2022

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“Der Eindringling war der Klassenfeind, der mit allen Mitteln aufgehalten und vernichtet werden musste. Wurde der Aufforderung, stehen zu bleiben, nicht nachgekommen, war unmittelbarer Schusswaffengebrauch angeordnet. Hätten die Grenzsoldaten nicht geschossen, hätte der Staatsanwalt auf sie gewartet.”

Jiří Jícha - soldier of basic service - in uniform of the Border Guard in 1979
Jiří Jícha - soldier of basic service - in uniform of the Border Guard in 1979
photo: archive of Jiří Jícha

Jiří Jícha, gebürtig aus Český Těšín, wurde nach seiner Ausbildung zur PS-Kompanie in Zadní Chodov bei Mariánské Lázně versetzt, also gezielt an das andere Ende der Republik. “Das Grenzgebiet war nach den Deportationen entvölkert und es gab dort nur wenige Menschen, so dass kein Neuling der Aufmerksamkeit der Einheimischen entging. Offiziere und Angestellte lebten in der Gegend und jeder kannte jeden”, beschrieb er die Atmosphäre im Grenzgebiet kurz vor 1980. Es herrschte eine nervöse Wachsamkeit und Besorgnis und es war die oberste Priorität, niemanden passieren zu lassen. Unter anderem wurden in der Nähe des Gebiets in Zadní Tachov Grenzanlagen zu Übungszwecken errichtet. “Es handelte sich um eine exakte Nachbildung der echten Staatsgrenze, einschließlich Sperranlagen, Stacheldraht usw. Dort ereignete sich am 27. November 1979 auch ein Zwischenfall, als der Schütze Miloš Kukla von einem bewaffneten Eindringling erschossen wurde. Sein Dienstkollege, der Unteroffizier Mirek Plíšek, der den Überläufer schließlich unschädlich machte, musste weitere anderthalb Jahre in der gleichen Einheit an den gleichen Orten ableisten. Sie haben ihm nicht einen Tag erlassen”, erinnerte sich Jiří Jícha. Text pochází z výstavy Paměť hranice (nejde o překlad životopisu). Der Text stammt aus der Ausstellung Das Gedächtnis der Grenze (es handelt sich nicht um Übersetzung der Biografie).