Petr Goldmann

* 1955

  • "In 1977, when Charter 77 came to light, a ROH training or meeting began there, explaining to us how the losers and soldiers for the ugly money of the capitalist or the pope preached the ideas that lead to World War III and the breakup of our beautiful socialist world; so you could see that the regime itself was getting rather nervous. My mother signed the Charter at the time, so we waited to see what it would be like, because it was not uncommon in the various circles of their friends who signed it to have to go to various interrogations. that they were hurt. And I assumed they would kick me out of school, and surprisingly, it didn't happen."

  • "I was 13 years old in 1968, where my serious memories begin. The world began to move and my parents, just as the Communists were enthusiastic, wished for change, and got involved in it to some extent. And I remember how it was the year when I first started reading the newspaper intensively, until then it was uninteresting for the child and suddenly a lot of things were happening and it was such a nice atmosphere.When then came August, we were at the cottage at that time and my parents they didn't let me go to Prague for the first week; it was such a wild one, when they fired at the Czech Radio, tanks were burning on Václavák, etc. In that week we returned to Prague and I could go to the streets and I could soak up the excitement, here an atmosphere where people argued over whether resistance should be active or passive, and of course the passive one prevailed, when Prague was affixed with various and often very funny posters against the occupiers. But that feeling was replaced relatively quickly by knowledge that this is not the case, and it was already clear in the autumn that the conditions that existed in the spring of 1968 will not be or will be very severed."

  • "I kept waking up worried two years later. It wasn't until the years 1994 and 1995 that we thought it was really all over and especially around us so far that we hope that a return to totalitarianism would not be possible."

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    Praha, 09.11.2018

    (audio)
    duration: 01:08:41
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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With faith and hope through the hardships of life

Five-year-old Petr Goldmann
Five-year-old Petr Goldmann
photo: Domácí archiv

Petr Goldmann was born on May 9, 1955 in Prague as the second son of a family that supported the communist regime. The parents worked in high posts and even studied in Moscow, where their first son was born. Petr Goldmann’s father was imprisoned for resistance during World War II and went to two concentration camps - Auschwitz and Buchenwald, where there were two secret lines - Christian and Communist. He became involved in the second structure that helped the environment survive. They were led by Josef Frank, whom Petr Goldmann’s father considered a very honest man, so he was surprised to be tried and convicted in a fabricated trial in the 1950s. Petr Goldmann attended Křesomyslov Elementary School with extended language teaching, but his performance was not good. During the events of August 1968 the whole family was in a cottage in Senohraby; the parents of their older brother were allowed to go to Prague, but the younger thirteen-year-old Petr was not. He listened to Czechoslovak Radio for days and looked forward to the city, where he saw an excited city and felt the atmosphere of defiance. The parents did not agree with the invasion of Soviet troops. This period was important for Petr Goldmann, he refined his views and gradually went his own way. He joined the Scout and reconsidered his view of the world - both the Communist Party and the believing Christians - and converted to Catholicism. After a year at the lumberjack school, where he found out that this would not be his way of life, he got to Karlovy Vary for a pedagogical high school and studied with excellent results. However, he did not receive a recommendation for university. He started working as an educator at a boarding school in Lhotka, Prague. At this time, he already knew his current wife and began studying psychology by distance, because distance learning was not so much guarded by the regime. After graduation, the couple went to Karlovy Vary and worked in Ostrov nad Ohří, his wife Marie was a doctor. They belonged to the so-called gray zone - they were against communism, but at the same time they did not belong to active dissidents. They said several times that they were emigrating, but they were kept here by their aging parents. Petr Goldmann was not allowed to have interns in his ward and was often accused of religiously influencing his patients. His superior was a great communist. In 1991, their older son Jakub went to school and the family moved back to Prague with his younger son Šimon. The Goldmanns began working in a psychiatric hospital in Bohnice, where they worked until recently. Together with the Špinks, they founded the organization Cesta domů, which helps dying patients not to suffer and stay in the care of their families. Petr Goldmann is a recent retiree and faith is very important to him, which gives him the positive security that is important to him. It agrees very much with Václav Havel’s motto “Hope is not the belief that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something will make sense - no matter how it turns out.”