Jaroslav Adámek

* 1953

  • "So we decided, we took the exams for the secondary technical school in Hradec Králove. Everything was fine, we all passed, we were listed in the results, but I was the only one not accepted. There were two, they were future State Security members, one had a background, his mother was an important party member. I would have got in, but I had the patch from the '80s, that I was a participant, that we wrote, that we made the straw dummy, and it was all wrong forever. Some working-class background that was filled in, that was all wiped out, but that wouldn't even be the point. So I thanked the comrade and walked away."

  • "I did my own things, I was rebuilding my house, I played sports, I climbed mountains, I led my kids to do it, my girls. They couldn't have anything againsts us anymore and we kind of fell into oblivion. It was all the better when you had to deliver something. Someone came, old Mr. Hrudka for example, he's dead now, unfortunately his son died too, they were both chartists, theatre people. It happened very often that someone brought something."

  • "In the year fifty-three, when I was not yet born, just a sister, the cops arrested him. In Jaroměř it's called Na špici, it's a big crossroads, today it's the Expanze Hotel. The first house in the Expanze were normal policemen and the second one was State Security. They dragged him in there and my mother didn't know about him for three days. Three days later, the employees of ZAZ, the Antonín Zápotocký Plants, found him. Because my father was active in sports, he did football transfers, he used to go to Prague to sort things out, so they knew him, he was such an official. They helped him, his hands were smashed, his face, he couldn't even see how swollen he was, and that's how they brought him to my mother."

  • "The woman turned around and said, 'Jesus, there's something on fire!' My grandmother said, because it was freezing, 'They must be defrosting something, there's water in there.' There was just a little something burning on the ground, some newspapers, and there were some bottles, I remember that. We went back there later. We weren't paying attention to it anymore and suddenly, like, you hear this pressure wave. And now somebody got up and ran to the railing, climbed over it, it was in an instant, and ran towards Wenceslas Square. There were still trams going up there, and I pushed the two bags to my grandmother. I won't tell you how she scolded me afterwards. I ran after him. There were two trams. I would have got between them, that would have been the end of me, so I waited, and at that moment he turned again somewhere bellow the statue of Wenceslas and ran up. A gentleman from the tram stopped and literally knocked him down and threw his coat on him, they had these long coats. I was the second one there, and the left side still from the waist, from the thigh was burning. So I took off my new jacket and threw it at him."

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    Pardubice, 19.11.2021

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I didn’t hear him shout anything, says witness to Jan Palach’s self-immolation

Jaroslav Adámek as a train driver
Jaroslav Adámek as a train driver
photo: Witness´s archive

Jaroslav Adámek was born on 4 October 1953 in Jaroměř into a railway family. Daddy Jaroslav Adámek worked as a stoker and engine driver and mother Marie, née Kalenská, was a conductor. He had an older sister. Daddy was interrogated and beaten for three days in 1953 by State Security (StB), who wanted to accuse him of espionage. In Jaroměř, he completed primary and municipal school and then trained as a mechanic of motor rail vehicles. Becoming a train driver was his dream, which he fulfilled. During the August 1968 occupation, he wrote signs around the town and with a friend made a straw dummy sending the occupying soldiers home. That’s why he was not accepted to secondary technical school, even though he passed the entrance exam. On 16 January 1969, while visiting Prague, he accidentally witnessed the self-immolation of Jan Palach, even covering his body with his own jacket. Only in hindsight did he learn that it was not an accident but a desperate anti-occupation protest. The experience marked him deeply. In the 1970s, he planned to emigrate to Canada, which didn´t happen. In the 1980s, he used to take parcels of materials for the Chartists by train. He refused an offer to join the Communist Party. In 1989 he demonstrated in Prague and participated in the preparation of the protests in Jaroměř. He was a co-founder of the Civic Forum in Jaroměř. After the revolution, he ran his business and travelled. In 2021 he was living in Jaroměř.