Petr Blažka

“There was one boy who was a member of our troop. His dad had been quite severely persecuted in 1968. We knew his dad. He had been involved in the project of children’s villages. Thus we thought that the boy would be all right. Under the totalitarian regime, we had to select our new members – we would take new boys only from families we knew. We couldn’t just go to school and say that we are recruiting new members. We had to think about them, to make sure that it was a good family and that their child would not be telling to anybody that we were Scouts. It worked fine all the time, but this boy's dad who had been oppressed by the regime, and his parents thus feared that the same would happen to the boy, and therefore they let him adopt the official propaganda. They did not explain it to him. The boy absorbed these things at school and he made trouble. At that time, we somehow managed to get away with it, but we were afraid. ´What, Scouting?! But Scouting is forbidden!´ To which I replied: ´Are you crazy or what?´”

“The Cub Scouts were growing up, and they were not leaving. We therefore continued as the patrol of Kangaroos. We had our own program, we were going hiking to Slovakia and Romania, and doing day trips from camps, we were going to theatre… We lived a very intense life with the patrol. We were a sundry lot. There were boys who were very earnest believers, as well as boys who were very liberal. And whenever we rode the train somewhere or sat in the tent during the rain, many discussions ensued.”

“Ivan Dada and Ešva went to the Sokol organization in Dejvice. There were brothers Vokoun and Kopecký, and they told them that they would like to continue with Scouting activities, but that they need some patronage. It was brave of the Sokols to allow us to be there. At first we were named Club for outdoors and outdoor exercise, and we were meeting in the clubhouse which was in the backyard behind the Sokol gymnasium in Dejvice.”