“At the beginning the camps were organized for about thirty-five children. Later we reduced the size of the groups. We had twelve or fifteen participants, and the group was thus less conspicuous and it simply looked like a bunch of people spending time in their summer house. It was not a large camp or anything like that. It was necessary to prepare for the organization of summer houses during the year. Those who were helping us to lead the activities, the assistants – there were about three hundred of them – were coming to see us two times a year. I would arrive there with Kája and during those meetings we would discuss the topics for teaching, as well as first aid or how to avoid the State police, games and all kinds of other things.”
“Every Christmas we organized a huge meeting in Prague. We divided the boys into groups of five or six who would stay in one family’s home and during the days come for gatherings to a place where it was possible to meet. At the beginning we were meeting all together, but later it was no longer possible because the place could not hold so many people. However, every time we dared to organize some event like going to a cinema all together. One day I was buying 150 tickets for the film Gandhi. The ladies in the box office were curious about it: ‘Are you buying it for a school?’ I replied: ‘Well, something like that...’ ‘And would not you like a discount?’ they kept asking me. ‘I don’t need a discount,’ I said. Hundred and fifty of us then gathered in the cinema. For us, it was a great experience to be able to do something like that in that communist society.”
“It was raining and we began to get bored inside the tents that we built and so we went to a pub. We went there for lunch and we stayed until dinner. It was in Sušice and the girl then went to church in the evening. Later we talked in a boat; I was about twenty-two years old. For me, it was an impulse to go to a church myself. We were on the boating trip for three weeks and we hiked over the Šumava Mountains. That was my life. When I returned I went to a mass, and I was touched by the priest’s ordinary sermon and so I began going to church.”
Pavel Kadlečík was born on December 20, 1953 in Prague-Vršovice. His mother and father worked as tailors. After completing elementary school he continued in his studies at the secondary school of mechanical engineering in Vršovice. From 1974 he worked as a train driver. After completing reduced army service in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions in 1977 Pavel began working in the Aircraft Maintenance company in Prague-Letňany. In 1980 he found a job in the company Metrostav, where he worked until 1990. From 1978 he has been involved in developing undercover Salesian mission in Czechoslovakia. Together with Karel Herbst he was organizing summer camps for young people and he was secretly ordained a Salesian priest. He conducted his study in the form of lectures held in private apartments. In 1990 he became a member of the Salesian community in Rumburk where he still lives today.
