Jaromír Jan Jech

* 1949

  • “My landlady woke me up the following day, we were staying on a farm in the country, and told me, not with a serious but rather amused voice that there were some shootings in Prague. Then I watched TV but had no idea what was happening. I came to work, my bosses lent me a transistor radio, I tuned it to Pilsen on long waves and was listening. I was sitting on an embankment by the railway track and I was crying. I was young. But at that moment I realised what was going on. An interesting thing about the archaeological research I did was the digging. An archaeological research is not about little brushes and things we see on TV. It’s mainly about digging. Three former Wehrmacht soldiers who only returned from the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, early 1960s, worked there. They only worked together, did not talk even to other Germans, did not say hello, nothing. They were only together, digging, working. And these three came to me when they saw me there and offered me a cigarette. We were smoking wordlessly and then they left again. These people just had their own experience with the Soviets. Regardless of who was to blame for the war, they could probably understand what you feel when you are under the Soviet control, too."

  • "I was talking to my wife about it and she said: ‘Go to that meeting then.‘ So I went there and that meeting became my fate after 1989. There were masses of people talking about everything that must be done, what changes are on the way, and then it was the end of it. I was saying to myself: ‘That‘s nice but now what? If we want something, we must know what we’re going to do, how we will proceed.‘ This was a day after my arrival and then I immediately became a member of the Civic Forum. But not on the first day yet. Then I only started addressing few people I had known and trusted, right on the spot. Those were people I used to play ice-hockey with for instance or who used to be my teachers, some of them were acquaintances from a concert or a theatre group… So I started approaching them saying that things might change again in three days but we need to be prepared in a way. I used to have a notebook where I‘d put their names and phone numbers and somehow started managing the following events.“

  • “I have a list of countries you have travelled to for business or study – UK, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Italy, Israel. You have been to them all…“ - “I have and I’ve examined how public administration works there. Starting from the municipal level to the regions though they don‘t have everywhere, up to the top level. I visited Donetsk in the Ukraine. I was there with Petr Pithart whom I like very much. I could feel the hopelessness there. Historically, they’re in much worse situation than we are. Feudalism was replaced by the Soviet regime right away. Everything was under its control – factories, schools, supplies. Then it all collapsed, the market went completely wild and there were tens of per cent of unemployed people who languished literally on the street. And at the same time some non-profit organisations from Sweden and Norway in a good faith with their eyes alight, on creaky chairs sharing one computer – but that‘s not what matters the most. What matters is that there’s no connection to public administration. This is essential for every country that has something in common with that Euro-Atlantic civilization of ours, with democracy. There has to be a connection with public administration. That‘s why the legislation exists. Municipalities have some responsibilities here. It’s another matter if they outsource for instance the care for the elderly to a non-profit organization. But it’s impossible to do so without rules that just weren’t there. This confirmed to me the need to build that link between municipalities, regions, and national government and consequently extend it to include all matters affecting people‘s lives.

  • How can you possibly remember that… I admire all the people who have known that communism was an enemy since they were six. In my family it was a kind of funny. We shared our house with my mum’s parents. My granddad was wounded in World War I, coincidentally on the same day that I was born, and he would always celebrate this day as his second birthday. Even though his left arm had been permanently disabled, he gave up his disability compensation in favour of the country. My grandparents were great supporters of Masaryk. They strongly supported the First Republic. They also built their own house before retirement but the communists put tenants in it which was hard for them to bear. And my grandma was so special. She used to go to church, crucified Jesus Christ was hanging there but she would insist on her own version: ‘The communists did it to him.’ On the other hand, parents did not patronize us much. I was a member of the Pioneer organization, got a red scarf and felt proud of it at my age. But grandma would say: ‘Watch out, it‘s the communists who did it.‘ And at times when some goods was scarce, which did not really bother me much as a child, my grandma would show me decorative soaps shaped as apples or lemons and say: ‘It was us, the capitalists, who made these.’

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, Eye Direct, 10.06.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:27:55
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Říčany, 09.01.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 41:44
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

False accusations and removals are easy to make

Jaromír Jech in January 2020
Jaromír Jech in January 2020
photo: Provided by students working on the Stories of Our Neighbors project

Jaromír Jan Jech was born on 12th August 1949 in Prague and lived in the nearby town of Říčany with his parents. His father, Jaromír Jech, a German and Czech language studies university graduate, worked as a grammar school teacher in Říčany and later became a researcher in the Institute of Etnography and Folklore at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After expressing his disapproval with the invasion of the armies of the Warsaw pact into Czechoslovakia, he was dismissed from his job and not allowed to publish. Jaromír Jan graduated from the Říčany grammar school. Between 1967 and 1970 he studied archaeology in Brno. During the invasion of the occupation armies in August 1968 had a summer job for archaeologists in West Germany. He had an opportunity to study in Switzerland at that time but returned to Czechoslovakia. He did not finish his studies and from 1970 worked as an assistant worker in the Léčiva national enterprise in Dolní Měcholupy. In 1988 he became one of the initiators and prime movers of protests against the planned development of a prison in Říčany. This case had not been concluded until after the revolution of 1989. In the revolutionary year of 1989 he joined the activities of the Civic Forum and then participated in local government. He was a mayor of Říčany in 1990-1994. He was then a member of the municipal council in 2002-2010 and a member of the municipal assembly until 2014. He has been an active member of the Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic since 1990.