Ask your loved ones about their past
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Pavel Dukát was born on December 5, 1934 in Prague and lived in Smíchov with his parents and ten years younger his sister. His father worked at the post office and fought in Italy during World War I. He enlisted in the army in September 1938, and returned home after a few days to sign the Munich Agreement. In 1941, the witness began attending primary school in Santoška. He remembers the war years in Prague and the bombing of Prague on February 15, 1945, which caught up with him and a his friend near Palackého náměstí. He watched the Prague Uprising from the window of the house, as was the arrival of the Red Army. After the war, he started going to the renewed scout unit, he recalls the camp under Čerchov. After the war, the father was assigned to the post office in Jablonné v Podještědí, where the family moved. Pavel Dukát started going to Sokol here and practiced gymnastics. He graduated at the grammar school in Liberec. He then moved with his aunt to Prague, where he graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University. After his studies, he spent two years in the war, first at the radar in Trutnov, then a year in Opatovice nad Labem and the last four months in Sokolov. He then joined the project institute, where he was in charge of laying interstate and international cables and related projects. He also remembers August 1968, when he witnessed dramatic events in front of Czechoslovak Radio. He drove the forbidden publications in his car to Podještědí, which were being published in Prague at the time. He worked at the design institute until 1970, when he did not pass political checks due to his disagreement with the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. The communists reassigned him to the position of construction leader in the field, so he traveled throughout the republic. During the laying of cables in Rozvadov, they were guarded all the time by two border guards with submachine guns. State Security monitored him because of friends from the West and later questioned him in Bartolomějská Street. But he never considered emigrating out of the republic. He experienced the Velvet Revolution with enthusiasm, took part in anti-regime demonstrations, including two in Dresden during 1989. Only two years ago, at an open day in the Security Forces Archive, he learned that he had been monitored by the State Security under the previous regime. Pavel Dukát lives in Prague.
