Interviewer: “A pillar of Jesuit life are Ignatian spiritual exercises. Did communities exist where such exercises were taking place?” “In the Stalin years, this was impossible, because every move we made was being watched. A meeting of two people could be qualified as a subversive activity leading to interrogations. Those of us that had already done these exercises – for instance, we had passed 30-day exercises in the novitiate – were doing them on their own. There is the practice of an eight-day spiritual exercise in the Jesuit Order that takes place every year. We did these ourselves. When it relaxed a bit later on, we did secret spiritual exercises for example at some friend’s cabin, or at some farm, while on a job or in prisons. It was in very unusual environment. Because of the abnormal conditions the people doing the exercises had to be particularly strong in their faith. Normally, when you’re doing an exercise, you’re alone in one house, there is no one else, you’re alone and have all the peace of mind you need to pray and meditate. But we had to do it at work or somewhere like that and additionally, we had to stay on guard lest nobody is watching us. You had to be very careful because there were spies everywhere. You can do exercises under such conditions but it's not an ideal environment. It was almost an art and everyone had to build on his previous experience. The structure of the exercises remained the same, of course, because it is codified in the exercise book. But it was necessary to choose the topics and to respond to specific situations. Ignatius gives the person who’s doing the exercise instructions how to respond to the situation of another person doing the exercise. After the meditation he is making an interview with him on what he learned, or didn’t learn or what he gained from the exercise. The next contemplation is based on the findings of the previous one. Of course, in abnormal conditions, you have to respond more to these conditions and the resulting abnormal situations. For example if someone lives in this or that situation and has this or that problem, you have to choose a topic that will help him with his problem. Of course, you always look to Christ.”
“In this area, of course, the Chinese section is of the greatest importance, but as far as I know, it focuses on the positive interpretation of Christian doctrine and leaves the political issues out of the picture as much as possible. Especially the underground Church in China is saying: ‘We have no funds, we need texts, we need information about matters of faith, leave the political issues aside, it will not help us, only make the situation worse’. Then there’s the Vietnamese section, which tried to help the Catholics in Vietnam during the hard times in a similar way. Then the Spanish broadcast, not only for Cuba but also for South America. They give information similarly on what is happening in the Church, the Magisterium principles, the teachings office, the Holy Father and his pronouncements and work. I know how they feel from my own experience – we were isolated in Czechoslovakia until I emigrated in 1968. You feel cut off from the rest of the world and it is extremely depressing. Any sign that the outer world knows about you, that it cares about you and tries to inform about your difficulties is very encouraging. That’s what Radio Vatican tries to do today.”
“I’ve compared our situation with figures from elsewhere after I got out in 1968. I have always prided myself that despite all the discrimination, harassment and imprisonment, eleven out of thirty-three members remained faithful here. I compared it with the Spaniards, where in one province only five remained out of forty. I thought that we were very good.” Interviewer: “This means that some did leave?” “Of course they did. In the fifties it seemed that all was lost forever. It was really tough to withstand that onslaught. I reckoned that I would never get into the priesthood. I was ordained only in 1968, after twenty years of waiting. All those years I lived as a Jesuit but officially I was a mere layman. I had to constantly fight it. In Brno, I lived among theologians, where some said: ‘one more year and I’ll get married’. They were my friends, it wasn’t easy to resist their ideas. But if a profession is strong, it will last. Eleven out of thirty-three made it.”
“It was a wonderful advantage for us that they put us together – monks, priests and some lay people, which we first thought were spies, but then it turned out that they were just as affected as we were. They were students who soon joined us. But because we were among ourselves, we served the Holy Mass, did confessions and in addition we studied. I was supposed to study philosophy after the novitiate. I still managed to make the first few secret vows in Bohosudov then to be followed by the study of philosophy. But we were assigned to the PTP. There we profited from the present students of philosophy. There were no professors in the PTP. They were giving us classes on Sundays and evenings and in this way we tried to study philosophy and keep the spirit of learning. Later, of course, we had to catch up with everything. So in this respect, it was great that we were all put together even though it was a purely clerical company with a strict regime and all sorts of discrimination – for instance night alarms. But we managed to eliminate these night alarms in a beautiful way. Once there was an inspection from Komárno and of course they initiated a night alarm. They drove us out to walk for an hour and then we were called back. In the morning – without agreeing – we all went to work, sat down and slept. When the foreman came and ask why we weren’t working we told him that we had to march in the night. They protested this practice and since then the alarms were abandoned. Of course, they were investigating who had organized this but they didn’t find anything, because it wasn’t organized at all. It was spontaneous. It was a normal reaction to sit down and sleep after a sleepless night.”
Interviewer: “What kind of people were in command in the PTP?” “Well, I have to say that it was the best material in the whole army. They put these commanders to the PTP as punishment for some offense they had committed. Most of them committed moral or financial offenses. One of them embezzled some money, the other one was a womanizer, etc. The political officers or politruks were the worst – they were above all mentally limited and fanaticized people. We had our own subtle ways how to make jokes of them. I have a beautiful memory about one such joke that Father Šimonovský, a Redemptorist, made of one of the politruks. The point is that most of the politruks had grave trouble to even read properly. All they were capable of was giving lectures from their manuals. Once it happened that one of the politruks gave his manual to Šimonovský and ordered him to read a section from it. Šimonovský used to cover up his ‘secret’ activities – several hours of studying every day – by putting Rudé Právo (a dominant Communist newspaper of that time – note by the translator) in front of him. He had the brilliant idea to read always one sentence from the manual and then one sentence from the editorial of the Rudé Právo newspaper. You can’t imagine the parody he made of it. He read some bashing of capitalism from the manual and praise of Communism from the editorial. We almost burst out of laughter. And the politruk was just staring at us and did not understand what was going on. That was a night of great suffering, because it was so painful not to be allowed to laugh openly. But still we had a lot of fun. Of course they were absolutely incapable of developing a proper thought or of justifying anything. When someone asked them a witty question all they could respond was some stupid definition or quote from their manual. And if you continued asking they just said: ‘Shut up and go on’. It was brainwashing.”
Full recordings
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Řím - redakce české sekce Radia Vatikán, 25.10.2006
Josef Koláček was born in 1929 in Brno, Bystrc. He was raised in a Catholic family. After graduating from high school in 1948 he volunteered for the Jesuit novitiate at Velehrad. He was determined to live up to his profession despite the extremely tense situation with respect to the persecution of the Church. His tutor was the legendary Father Zgarbík, who had been imprisoned by the Nazis and afterwards tortured to death in Communist prisons. After the elimination of the Jesuits in the spring of 1950, Josef found himself interned in Bohosudov, from where he was called up after a few months for military service and assigned to the infamous Auxiliary technical battalions (PTP) in now-Slovakia. The so-called “pétépáci” (members of these battalions) were deployed under primitive working conditions as construction workers. In 1954, he was released from the PTP and continued to make a living as a construction worker. He continued to abide by the rules of Jesuit life, resolved to exercise his profession even under the extremely adverse conditions existing at the time. Common life of the Jesuit Order was non-existent at the time. In 1968 he was able to travel and stay in Austria, where he also completed his philosophical and theological studies. Before leaving for Austria, he was ordained a priest, with a twenty-year delay. Since 1970 he has lived in Rome, where he was shortly after his arrival nominated the head of the Czech section of Vatican Radio. He is now the editor of the broadcast.
