A year after the occupation, signs appeared saying, “Long live the Soviet Union!” So I decided I wasn’t going to stay here
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Jiří Kocián was born on 21 December 1939 in Konice. He grew up as an only child in the family of Vlasta, née Novotná, and Miloslav Kocián. His father ran a confectionery on Konice Square until the ban on trade. Jiří aspired to become a forest engineer, but because of his cadre assessment, he was not accepted to the forestry school. He trained as a turner in Lutín, and from the age of 16, he worked in manual occupations. He experienced the August invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Olomouc. In 1969, he emigrated to Austria, received political asylum and was hired to work in West Berlin at the Siemens factory. In June 1970, he went on holiday to Romania, where he met his then-girlfriend and later wife Marie Vejmolová. Their plan to escape together through Yugoslavia to West Berlin didn’t quite work out, and their stay abroad was longer than they had anticipated due to two failed attempts to cross the border. Eventually, their paths diverged in Belgrade, Yugoslavia - Jiří had to return to work, and Marie was waiting for her visa to Berlin. During a stopover in Hungary, however, Jiří was spotted by customs officers and dragged off the plane. After being detained in Budapest, he travelled to Komárno, Bratislava and finally to the Bohunice detention centre in Brno, where he spent several months. After almost two weeks of waiting in Yugoslavia, Marie obtained a transit visa to travel to Berlin. When she did not find Jiří there, she returned to Czechoslovakia through East Berlin. They received suspended sentences (20 and 14 months for 3 years) from the court for illegally leaving the republic (§ 109). Jiří Kocián worked for many years at the TOS company in Olomouc, and in the mid-1980s, he became an insurance agent. Between 1988 and 1989, he took part in anti-government demonstrations in Prague. In 2023, he was still living in Olomouc.
