RNDr., CSc. Ivan Beneš

* 1948

  • "But then, when [Palach's] funeral was, it was just a must, so I went there. Of course, I took my camera and took pictures as much as I could. I figured that the pictures, no matter how they turn out, would have historical value. By the way, I took pictures of that August 22, 1968, too - I used the whole film, and when I went over the Palacký Bridge, there were Soviet cars and a soldier, and when he saw the camera, he took it away from me. He took the film out of it and destroyed it. That made me very angry."

  • "They developed the film I took that evening. They made A4 photos of it and looked at it under a magnifying glass. I was staring! I was staring, because I've never taken photographs like that in my life... I set the aperture to 5.6 and one hundred and twenty-five speed and the Japanese film managed to picture everything. I have already mentioned that I had not been in the army... I was told that I had topographically marked the national border for fifteen kilometers. The hill with the cloud, which I also took a picture of, that's where the radar was!"

  • "A few days before he was supposed to leave [for Israel], two State Security officers came to his office and took his passport, saying he was a state secret bearer because he was a company doctor for the National Security Corps. Now you might understand the non-conformity, because my dad sat down, wrote a four-page letter, which basically said that if he looks up the cops' asses and knows which one has hemorrhoids and which one doesn't, it's not a secret. And that there's something called the Hippocratic Oath. He went with the letter to the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and two days later the highest district officials of State Security came and returned him his passport with thanks."

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    Ústí nad Labem, 24.03.2024

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    duration: 02:48:13
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - Ústecký kraj
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My smog indicator and amplified sirens drove people into the streets

Ivan Beneš after graduation, Prague, 1971
Ivan Beneš after graduation, Prague, 1971
photo: witness´s archive

Ivan Beneš was born on 21 June 1948 into a family of a district doctor and a housewife. His father Karel worked in Slovakia before the World War II, but after the declaration of the Slovak state he was arrested and taken to the collection camp in Vyhne near Zvolen. His parents had distance wedding and after the wedding his mother Vlasta came to Slovakia to visit his father. She was arrested and taken to the same camp. After the end of the war, the young couple returned to Bohemia and the father found a job in Košt’any near Teplice, where he practiced for some time. Before the birth of the witness, the Beneš took in a boy whose parents had died in the Auschwitz extermination camp during World War II. After about a year, the child was claimed by his next of kin, who had served in the U.S. Army. When his service ended, he took the boy away. Ivan Beneš lived a beautiful and carefree childhood in Teplice. In order to improve his background profile so that he could study, his parents joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). His father left the party in 1968 for health reasons. He graduated from the Faculty of Science of Charles University with a degree in organic chemistry. After his studies, he joined the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague, and twice completed a one-year internship at a friendly German institute in Halle an der Saale. He married twice and raised three children. His second wife is German. In 1983, he joined the district hygiene station as head of the hygiene laboratories, devoted to measuring environmental pollution, water analysis and scientific work. He worked in “Project Teplice”, which investigated the development of air pollution in northern Bohemia. He was investigated by State Security for his contacts and trips abroad. He worked at the regional hygiene station and health institute in Teplice until 2018, since when he has been retired.