“I was 1969 and I got hospitalized in a hospital with suspected jaundice. And when the Soviet tanks and all the troops came to the Czech Republic, they had to empty the hospitals because they were expected to have a clash and needed beds, and I found out later. So, my parents took me home. So, for me it was very good that when I was a kid, I was five or six years old, so I was glad I didn't have to be far from my parents in the hospital.”
“... This will only be resolved when you are in place. Because this can't be planned or said in advance, because the atmosphere in that place, the people, or the whole ... That sort of crowd, that sort of crowd madness or whatever. So, only there. And maybe you do. Sometimes as an impuls. One may not want to, but he will do it in self-defense. But I don't believe it, I don't believe that soldiers like them started shooting at people or something. That, I don't believe it. Because each of the young soldiers had a family member there. I had my wife and my parents there. Like, probably it would be like using it as a police force, maybe pushing a crowd or something, yes, but I don't believe anyone would give the order to shoot or something. That I do not believe.”
“We just did all kinds of sports; football, tennis, volleyball, I don't know, even hockey, we went to physical exercise classes... So there was a good physical fitness. And I could observe it with my colleagues and then the soldiers who went to the army at that time and what they do today; there was a huge difference. So mainly the sports activities. Simply we were somewhere on a daily basis. There were a lot of young people there, so the program was take care of.”
“Then they immediately arrested his dad and imprisoned him in the Mirov prison; he eventually died there. Well, even when he was lying on the ground in that pub, someone kicked and kept kicking him, and the pub owner said, "Let him be, don't kick him, he's our man." So, he ended up in prison, too, as a lot of people did. Many people had a similar story. The worst thing was that they had arrested my grandmother, my mom's mother, who was already alone and had two small daughters, and the mother had been locked up in jail too, and only because she had a serious accident there, so... she was released after half a year.”
Radek Henner was born on August 16, 1963 in Moravičany into a working class family. In his life he was strongly influenced by the story of his grandfather’s wife Ivana, who acted as an aviator on the Western Front during World War II. He trained as a carpenter and then completed the superstructure. His patriotic attitude and sense of team and team play led him to the idea of joining the military school in Vyškov after graduation and becoming a professional soldier. In 1987 he became commander of a military unit in Vimperk in the Bohemian Forest. In addition to their normal duties, the soldiers had the task of covering the security of the state border, but throughout their service until the Velvet Revolution, they did not have to intervene for real. In Vimperk Radek Henner spent twelve years of active military service. In 2000, as commander of nine hundred men, he participated in a six-month SFOR peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina devastated by a bloody civil war. His task was to contribute to the stabilization of the territory. Soldiers destroyed minefields, found weapons, and their task was also to arrest former war criminals. They also helped building kindergartens and schools and restore community life. Upon returning from this mission, they did not extend the witness’s commitment. However, security and homeland service are so fundamental to him that he tried to run for the European Parliament in 2019. Although he did not succeed in the elections, he does not rule out further political involvement.
