Milan Fajman

* 1935

  • "On Wednesday, no, on Saturday we went to Rügen and on Wednesday the Russians invaded the Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia. Well, of course, Rügen is connected to the country by a flyover. And on that flyover, the German policemen stood up and they didn't let anybody off the island and they didn't let anybody on the island either, except, of course, the Germans or those who proved themselves. I know that there were several buses from Chomutov, for example, and from the big businesses here on that Rügen, and we would go down there and listen to the radio and hear what our people were reporting. And I know how many times there was Vltava, we knew it was the Germans, they were going to lie to us. And this went on for, I think, about a week or so, the girls were small, so they were choosing which villa we were going to stay in, which guesthouse we were going to stay in, because they said they weren't going to let us go home. But then it turned out that they lined us up on that trestle on that bridge, the cops in front, the cops in the back, and they drove us like that all the way across Germany to Tinovec and left us there. And I know that at that time our customs officers said, please - this was at four o'clock in the morning - don't go, the Russians are ruthless, they drive there with tanks and they will sweep you and your whole car off the hillside, because it's only downhill from Cínovec to Dubí and Ústí. So we waited until daylight and then we set off, and now we arrived in Dubí and there were all these slogans, Lenin wake up, Brezhnev has gone mad and all these slogans. So we arrived home, we saw that something serious had happened and that we weren't going to get anything twice as good."

  • "I, when I went to industrial school, I constantly had it in my subconscious that I could go flying. And there they did some recruitment, they did some recruitment at school, who would have some inclination for it, so of course I applied and we went to the airport in Zbraslavice, that's outside Kutná Hora, there was an airport there and they poured theory and practice into us, as far as flying was concerned, because it was assumed that we would be pilots when we finished and we would go to the army to fly. And this was quite fatal to me because after a while I was stopped outside the airfield - yeah, that's where I met my wife, and she flew gliders and I flew powered aircraft. So they stopped me and wouldn't let me in. That there was a denunciation from the municipality that I might be somewhere on the other side of the border and so on, so they banned me from the airport."

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    Pátek, 01.04.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:27:55
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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The communist officials from Pátek didn’t leave me alone even in Prague

Milan Fajman at the army, 1950s
Milan Fajman at the army, 1950s
photo: Archive of the witness

Milan Fajman was born on 13 November 1935 in Pátek u Poděbrad as the youngest of four children of Božena and Ladislav Fajman. His parents farmed ten hectares, and his maternal grandparents, the Jelíneks, owned an agricultural machinery factory in Pátek. He recalled the war years when some Jewish citizens disappeared and when two uncles were imprisoned in concentration camps. From an early age, he aspired to become a pilot, assembled working model airplanes, and rode a bicycle. After the Communists came to power, his father was forced to join the United Agricultural Cooperative (JZD) and the Jelinek factory was nationalized. Milan Fajman was supposed to join the mines after primary school, but the director of the town hall intervened and offered him the opportunity to learn to be an electrician in Pečky. He graduated with honours, so he could continue his studies at the electrical engineering school in Kutná Hora. He enjoyed his studies, assembled radios with his friends and in his free time he prepared for his career as a military pilot at the airfield in Zbraslavice. However, it was abandoned after his father left the JZD in 1953. He served the war in the 312th Heavy Artillery Brigade, where he enrolled in a newly established auto course, eventually teaching auto-electricity. After the war he married and had two daughters. He began working on the railroad in Nymburk, but soon moved with his family to Ústí nad Labem, where he worked for twenty years as a traction line foreman. In August 1968 he was on holiday with his family in Rugen when the occupation troops invaded the republic. They were allowed home from Rugen after a few days. In the early 1980s he moved with his family to Prague, where he worked on the railway until his retirement. After the revolution, he founded the company Elkov and began to produce so-called punch-outs, i.e. protective electrical equipment used, for example, at railway crossings. He sold the prosperous company in 2011 and moved back to Pátek for retirement, where he lived in his family home in 2022.