“Not from my church but he was a Pole and a Catholic, right? Well, so what I did was that I saved the family of that wounded Pole and his son.” (Interviewer) “The Ukrainian nationalistic guerillas were after him?” “Yes, the Ukrainian nationalists (the so-called “Banderovci” – note by the translator) were on his heels. These nationalists were the scum of the earth. Maybe you’ve already heard something about them, or maybe you’ve read about them in my book. My stories about how I had to face them all the time. These nationalistic Ukrainian gangs – they came to search my home but my heart remained firm. I told them: ‘well, come inside and search’. The wounded man was hidden in the third room… And when the Soviets came later, I was hiding the nationalists themselves. I was saving them and sending them to Czechoslovakia. Most of them were Poles and Jews – I helped them.”
(Interviewer) “What about the Germans? Did the Germans ever search your home?” “The Germans didn’t do these searches that much. I was quite lucky. Once there was a German who stayed at my place. He knew that I was anti-Communist and that I was taking care of people. But he didn’t know what people I was hiding and taking care of. Then he found out that I had been hiding Jews. I said: ‘Jews? No I was helping people!’ ‘No, Jews’. I said: ‘I don’t know Jews. I know only people’. A Czech, a Pole or a Ukrainian. Those Ukrainians were killing their own people because they wanted to cleanse their country of other ethnics. In my case, it always ended up good.”
(Interviewer) “What was it like in 1989 when Communism fell? What were your feelings at that time? For instance what were the demonstrations like?” “Well, I was very happy because I knew that from then on nobody would arrest me again, there were no grounds for arrest anymore.” (Interviewer) “And did you preach again? Were you active as a preacher again?” “Yes, I was a preacher till the age of 93. I had no trouble with my feet then but now my feet are sick.”
“I went to the Ukraine, to Kupičov. I stayed there for eight years. It was during the hardest times when the war broke out and raged in the years 1937 to 1943. The Ukrainian nationalists and their guerillas were pretty strong in the area back then. Maybe you’ve heard about it. Well, and I was helping the people in the area as a preacher but also as a human. I helped everybody I could. It was a Jewish family, it was Poles, because those nationalists were Ukrainians. I was even hiding a Russian. It took a happy ending each and every time. Today, I sometimes can’t believe how well it went. It’s a wonder it didn’t go wrong at least once.”
“And what were you doing under the Communists, under the Communist regime? You told me that after you were released, that they didn’t give you the state permission to be a preacher. What did you do then?" "Well I was cheating. I had the state-approved preaching manual but I preached according to my own views and opinions.” (Interviewer) “So you were gathering in flats with people or how did you do it?” “Well either I learned that they needed help or they came to ask me for help themselves. For instance, there was a woman whose husband had died. He probably died in a concentration camp. She got her dead husband’s documents. So she said: ‘they released my husband so I can help’ She said she married that man, that he was her husband. And both of them came from Poland to Silesia. And he counted now as her husband. So they came to my parsonage and we registered him there. But the police somehow found out from the people that it was a fraud and there was a trial. But I spoke with the judge and explained how it was. I managed to persuade that judge and he gave him the lowest possible sentence. Instead of six months of prison, they only had to serve a week each. Then another problem came up about which I talked to the judge: who was going to feed and take care of the cows? The judge proposed that they would be taking turns in the prison: the man would come home for the night and his wife would go to jail instead of him. So they served their one-week prison term in this way. The judge liked my attitudes and opinions because he thought they were right. That’s just a small story.” (Interviewer) “That was under Communism?” “Yes, that was under Communism.”
“Well I was helping those unfortunate people in the war. But not only then, I also was helping people in the Communist years. It was people that the Communists were after. I helped them so that they could exist. I also brought a whole battalion of Polish exiles to Czechoslovakia. So my life was basically work. Then I was imprisoned but I can tell you that hiding people during the war in the Ukraine was much worse. Because you didn’t know when the hour will come when they’ll learn about you and when they’ll come to arrest you. This permanent insecurity was the worst thing. Well but there is nothing I could do about it because whenever I saw someone suffering I couldn’t help myself. Especially in the case of the wounded Pole, whose wife and two daughters had been murdered. His son managed to escape. I hid those two in my house and cared for them. And then the Ukrainian nationalists came searching my house. But I helped them and that man recovered under my care. The Poles still keep sending me some money, a few Zlotys every month, they didn’t forget about me. Well, in my book I’m probably not gonna go into that much detail (the name of the book is “Pouštěj chléb svůj po vodě” - "Cast your bread upon the waters"). But I know that I did the right thing and my existence may go on.”
Full recordings
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Ústřední vojenská nemocnice, Praha-Střešovice, 23.06.2009
Jan Jelínek was born on May 19, 1912, in the Polish town of Zelov, in a family of descendants of Czech evangelical exiles. He was raised in the Protestant faith and led to Czech patriotism. As a boy, he was already working on accounting in the form of some scattered workshops at the Jan Sláma firm, which was involved in the textile industry. Afterwards, he purchased a textile factory. However, Mr. Jelínek wanted to become a preacher, so he studied at a missionary school in Olomouc from 1931-1935 and became an evangelical pastor. Then he worked as a director of a textile factory in his native town of Zelová. In 1937 he accepted the position of a preacher in Volhynia, and he served in the Czech village of Kupičov. Besides spiritual work, he also helped persecuted people regardless of their nationality or religion. He hid the Jews from the Germans, the Poles from the Ukrainian nationalists (so-called “Banderovci”), and the Ukrainian nationalists from the Russians. In 1942 he married Mrs. Anne, who was his faithful companion until his death in 2009. Together, they joined the Czechoslovak Foreign Army in 1944. Jan Jelinek was responsible for supplying an artillery regiment and his wife acted as a liaison for the regiment headquarters. He participated in the struggle for Czechoslovakian liberation and in the battles of Dukla. After the war he settled in the village of Oráčová, near Rakovník. Mr. Jelinek then worked as a preacher in Podbořany. He also helped with the repatriation of Czech exiles from Poland and the USSR. Because he strongly disagreed with the Communist regime, he did not support the establishment of co-operatives (JZD) and refused to cooperate with the secret police. Therefore, he was arrested in 1958 and sentenced to two years in prison for sedition. He served his penalty in a labor camp in Rtyně (in the foothills of the Krkonoše Mountains), where he worked as a coal miner. After his release in 1960, he was banned to stay in the Karlovy Vary region (Karlovarsko) and therefore could not return to Oráčová (which is located in that region). So, he worked as a laborer in a Prague factory that produced paints and varnishes. He stayed there until his retirement in 1972, when he could finally return to Oráčová. After a prolonged effort he received the necessary state approval and served as assistant pastor in Podbořany. He remained a cleric after the fall of Communism in 1989.
