Milan Adámek

* 1971

  • "They let me go fourty-eight hours later early in the morning. I went to see my friend and rang the bell. I think it was Saturday, and he was annoyed that I got up that early and I told him that I got something to say. He went to the gate and asked me in a drowsy manner what was going on. I replied: ,I have been arrested for two days due to the petition Several Sentences.‘ Immediately he livened up, rushed upstairs, we had tea and began analysing it. I told him they knew about us, as they mentioned various names. So I made up stories about the Several Sentences distributed by a certain person during a disco in Zlín, because they were eager to know, where I got the prints from. So I quickly made up something to mislead them. So I managed to play it the way noone was hurt without even thinking about it."

  • "We made for example A4, and either there were photos with a text or just a text. So we printed stuff like Several Sentences or from various deomnstration, which took place in Prague or samizdat news. So we were handing it to people´s awareness. We were carrying it under our shirts to factories and there we were distributing in varous places. Then a cadre man rushed in and tore it apart. Or we were giving it to various people in working professions. We already knew who is in favour and who was in prison in 1950s and then spent the rest of his life in working clothes. So we had out tips. We also gave it in accidental post boxes. So some prints were distributed intentionally and others by chance."

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    Holčovice, 12.07.2016

    (audio)
    duration: 01:47:01
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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He made a Stencil, on which hundreds of samizdats were printed

Milan Adámek - 2016
Milan Adámek - 2016
photo: Vít Lucuk

Milan Adámek was born on 30 March, 1971 in Přílepy. Yet with his parents and two siblings lived in a small town of Holešov. There he joined anti-regime activities with his eighteen friends. In the former Gottwaldov he regularly met Stanislav Devátý and other disidents. According to a plan of a company Canon, Milan Adámek created a single Stencil, using which hundreds of samizdats were printed. Just a few week before 17 November,  1989 he got a suspended sentence for distribution of the petition Several Sentences. After the fall of communism he worked in the Western Europe for four years. Later he and his wife bought a former coaching inn in the village Holčovice, which was also a cultural heritage. After years of reconstruction they gradually reconstructed a devastated large house and nowadays they rent the hall for various weddings and other celebrations.