“But on the night of the twenty-first [August 1968], my wife wakes me up: ‘Do you hear that?’ Heavy planes could be heard flying over. And I–still sleepy–say: ‘Well, the Russians are here.’ I said it jokingly. At that moment, the phone rang, and I realized it was no joke. It was my younger brother, and he said: ‘The Russians are occupying us.’ I quickly tuned in to Prague [Czech radio – trans.], but they didn’t broadcast anything there, thanks to that– his name was Jindra or something. So I tuned into the American one from Munich, and there they said it was true: the Russians were crossing the border. We never wanted to emigrate. I would like to visit America–of course–but we never thought of [immigrating] permanently. Then I said: ‘Are the children going to grow up in this again? So let’s run away.’”
“He had to stay at the cinema so the different parties could meet there. The communists had a meeting there, too, and I remember that my dad once laughed at a sign they hung above the stage: ‘We will throw the reaction down to the ground. Along with the Soviet Union.’ And one time, they wanted him to play the Soviet anthem for them on a gramophone record. He played it, but–I don’t know why–the sound quality was bad; the playback was bad. And they fired him for that. Then he worked as a projectionist at the Maceška cinema, so after 30 years of effort, saving up, and all kinds of things, he was back where he started as a young lad. And so it broke him, you could say. He’s never been himself ever since.”
“We didn’t pay any particular attention to it anymore and then, about three months later, they held a lecture about spies and how we were supposed to be very careful and watch out for spies. They also mentioned that there were some people that would be carefully watched. I was somewhat puzzled by that but it didn’t occur to me that they were actually talking about me. But then, I was about to go for vacation which happened once every year during military service. My wife - by then I had been a married man for a month - had already arranged a stay in a tent camp for us. I thought it would be odd to go there as a soldier, that it would be weird to appear among the civilians in my uniform. But eventually, it turned out premature to worry about these things and everything should finally be different. I was supposed to begin my holiday on Monday and I thought that I might be permitted to leave already on Saturday in order to have an extra weekend added to my holiday. But I was proven wrong as they told me they weren’t giving any permits. On Monday, my commander told me I had been chosen to represent our division in some signal-men contest. I tried to explain to him that I was originally supposed to go on vacation and that somebody else could very well replace me but he was not to be persuaded and so I went to that contest instead of my vacation. We were actually two representatives – me and one other guy who was a rained radio operator. The all-important contest was supposed to take place in the Ruzyně garrison but nothing happened for the first three days. I started to get mad from all this and I began plotting an escape to get to my vacation. But I was lucky not to do that because it would have made things even worse. And then the division commander called us into his office and told me to return to my unit as the exercise had allegedly been called off for 50%. Of course I was glad. He told me that there’s a Captain who’s going to Karlín and who could give me a ride. So I went together with an air force captain in his jeep, wondering about his kindness. We went in the direction of the Ruzyně prison. I knew that it was a prison – it was a high tower. I was talking to him. I said that now that the exercise had been called off for 50%, I would still manage to go on my vacation. He knew what was waiting for me but nevertheless, he said: ‘that’s good, now you’ll go on vacation’. I asked him: ‘that’s a prison over there right?’ while pointing with my finger at the tower. ‘No, that’s the new seat of the police. I’m going there to pick up the radio transmitter. You can help me with it’. So we drove right into the Ruzyně prison without me even suspecting any treachery. When we arrived there, we walked inside a hallway and there, a bunch of uniformed men were already waiting. But I thought it was the police men that he was talking about, not prison wardens. And that kind Captain told me: ‘sit down, I’ll be right back’. After he left, a tall man with glasses came to me and asked me: ‘are you František Čvančara?’”
“The problem was that Pragovka was a recruitment company and therefore it was practically out of the question to be allowed to leave it. For instance, I once had the opportunity to work as a repairman of movie cameras which would have been much more interesting for me but they just wouldn’t let me go. The only way to leave Pragovka was to sign up for work in the mines for one year. But I didn’t do that because in the mine, there are no windows. [KK: You would improve your cadre profile which was important…] Well, yes. I guess in 1964 or 1965, they passed a law that enabled you to quit your job if you handed in your dismissal a year before you intended to quit. I eventually did that but at that time, the job with the movie camera was no longer available so I worked with window shades.”
František Čvančara was born on 19 December, 1936, in Prague in the neighborhood of Žižkov. His father František, the brother of his father Ferdinand and his mother Terezie owned a movie-rental shop, a couple of Scout-licensed film theaters (mostly located out of Prague) and an archive of movies, posters and photographs. In the period of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Germans seized the Scout-licensed theaters and the rental shop. After the coup in 1948, the Communists took the rest of the family’s property. The best job that František Čvančara got due to his bad “cadre profile” was that of a lathe operatorin the Pragovka car factory. In 1956, he began his basic compulsory military service and he served together with Pavel Landovský, who later became a famous film actor. He recorded a fictional news report from a zoo that was peppered with a couple of political jokes using an official tape recorder. For this act, which was qualified as “disrupting the fighting morale of the army”, he was punished by 22 months in a “corrective facility”. The corrective facility turned out to be a uranium mine in, where he met Miroslav Dvořáček, an “agent walker” who was involved in the so-called “Kudnera” case. After he had served his (reduced) term, he came back to the Pragovka factory. In 1963, his son was born. In 1968, together with his wife and his son, they emigrated to Canada (his wife was in her seventh month of pregnancy). The beginnings in a foreign country weren’t easy but being active and laborious after his parents, he got through the hard times and established himself in Canada. After the revolution of November 1989, he’s been regularly coming back to his old fatherland almost every year.
