We did the most against communism by raising our children to be decent people
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Jasoň Hampl was born on 15 September 1931 in Prague. He grew up in poor circumstances, losing his father at the age of twelve. Then he entered the Salesian boarding school in Kobylisy. There, after 1948, he became involved in illegal church activities. In the boarding school he also experienced Operation K in April 1950, when the communist security apparatus occupied the male monasteries. The Salesian teachers were interned and replaced by teachers appointed by the ministry. Jasoň Hampl and a friend stole a cyclostyle from the boarding school so that it would not fall into the hands of the state, and later reproduced the Old Testament on it, which led to his prosecution in 1952. At that time he tried to emigrate to Austria. He tried to swim across the Danube near Bratislava, but was arrested and subsequently sentenced to an unconditional 18-month sentence. He served his sentence in Ilava and Jáchymov, and was released in 1953 on amnesty. He worked in a steelworks in Kladno and soon afterwards enlisted in the army. He then graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University. During normalisation he attended secret housing seminars with Ivan Havel. His cottage in the Jizera Mountains was a place of Christian meetings. He and his wife raised five children.
