Petr Král

* 1951

  • "I took both envelopes and headed to the company in Prague. It was so interesting there, because there was such a strange atmosphere, such tension. There were columns, because it was a former hotel, and the columns were plastered with all these... A person was curious, so I read it, and it turned out to be proclamations rejecting the intervention on November 17 in Prague. It was a denunciation from both the factory committee of the ROH (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement) and the KSČ (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia). So, I went to the secretary and asked, ‘Maruška, what’s going on?’ And she replied, ‘You don’t know? You’re clueless. Here, take these leaflets and put them up in Kolín!’ So, I went back to Kolín and put up those two proclamations. The next morning, a small lady from the national committee, clearly a party comrade, came by and said, ‘You have to take it down!’ And I said, ‘I don’t have to. This is from the local KSČ organization and the ROH factory committee. I’m just following orders to post it.’ She left annoyed. One of my colleagues, who lived in Kutná Hora because her husband was a career soldier and they lived in a military housing block, warned me: ‘You should take it down, boss, because they already know about you.’ I said, ‘Why should I take it down?’ Well, by the afternoon, there were already ten posters, and by the next morning, the shop window was completely covered. It couldn’t be stopped anymore, and that’s how it went, I think, until December 20.”

  • "That year, it was kind of amusing because I went along with the times in a way. I just went through it. On Wenceslas Square, armored personnel carriers marked with VB [Public Security] were driving out of Opletalova Street. I counted about 22 of them. The police vans were already lining up near the National Museum, along with units in white helmets, carrying shields and batons. But I had to get back to work, so I did. After work, I walked past the Children’s House towards Hybernia and then to Karlín. The trams weren’t running, so I had to walk. Near the Children’s House, I lingered for a bit. At the corner of Wenceslas Square near Melantrich, there was a cordon of People’s Militia and police. People were whistling and shouting insults at them. I wanted to go home, so I turned around, and suddenly, I saw people running past me. It didn’t occur to me to run too, even though some shots were fired—yes, that’s true—but I didn’t think of running. I was heading home, walking away with my back turned, and out of nowhere, I got a hard whack with a baton on my back. I can still feel it to this day. At that moment, I turned into Jarmila Kratochvílová [Czechoslovak Olympic sprinter]. I think I broke her Olympic record, even though I was running in low shoes. Then I was just flying. I didn’t let them catch me. We didn’t stop until somewhere near Hybernia. My back was really hurting, so I decided to head home."

  • "They were regular customers, my friends. When someone shops with you all year long, how could you not set aside a Hrabal book, some poetry, or something like that for them? I hated it. For example, Ota Pavel’s works would come out. If your shop received 22 copies, you had to serve seven libraries, four so-called literary distributors who sold them in factories, so how many would be left for the store? And then you had, I don’t know, sixty regular customers... It was absolutely crazy for me—it was a nightmare, a trauma. But that’s just how it was back then. Those books couldn’t be published in larger print runs because the publishers were allocated quotas for each title. Priority was given to the kind of engaged literature, the socialist realism, which we had sitting on the shelves but which I, of course, avoided ordering whenever possible. So, those would end up in the warehouses instead."

  • "It's true that there were specialists who were eavesdropping and typing it straight onto a typewriter. The Russians were there eavesdropping. Those were interesting, those soldiers didn't know any languages, they just had a tape recorder with a reel where there was some special wire on which to record it. This reel had twenty-four hours on it, and then there was one person, he was a lieutenant, who was a linguist, and he would play it back and define these things in some way. So there was a kind of collaboration. Otherwise, when they went out on exercises, the Russians got Czech uniforms, but they were dilettantes, they didn't take the plates off their cars, the license plates, so if there was a spy there, he must have known it was from the Russians. In addition, they were certainly talking in Russian between those reconnaissance vehicles and those spotters. Well, let's be honest..."

  • "My grandfather's name was Josef Holeček, he was a builder and he worked as a builder during the war - and our parents went there too - in Persia. He worked for the Konstruktiva company, and the company there was building for Reza Shah Pahlavi's elder silo, roads, bridges and so on. Then when the situation there changed, that his son dethroned him because he was German and the son was the other way round, the Russians came in from above and the English from below. The company changed a little bit into the Škoda factory in Pilsen, but they continued the construction and my grandfather worked there as a builder. But he got sick and died. He's buried there and his grave is still being maintained. It is maintained by the Czech consulate, which is there."

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    Hradec Králové, 17.12.2019

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In August 1969, he was beaten with a baton. Twenty years later, he got back at the communists

Petr Král, wedding at Kolín Town Hall, Kolín, June 1973
Petr Král, wedding at Kolín Town Hall, Kolín, June 1973
photo: Archive of Petr Král

Petr Král was born on 22 October 1951 in Prague as one of three children together with his brother Mirek and sister Hana. He also had a brother, Karel, who was his mother’s child from her first marriage. His parents, who were both booksellers, divorced soon after his birth and he lived with his mother and siblings. Grandfather Josef Holeček worked as a builder in Persia (today’s Iran) during the years of World War II. In his childhood Petr was involved in sports, especially football. Between 1967 and 1970 he apprenticed in Prague as an antiquarian and bookseller. He lived through the days of social resistance against the arrival of the troops in August 1968 and the onset of normalisation. In August 1969 he experienced a clash between protesters and the People’s Militia. In 1970-1972 he completed his military service with the radio operators in Kolín. He was also deployed with the unit at the border bases in Hazlová and Milíře. In Kolín he met his wife Jindřiška Junová, whom he married in 1973. He had two children with her, a daughter Petra (1973) and a son Daniel (1978). He worked as a bookseller in various positions until his retirement. Since 1976 he has lived in Kolín, where he built a cooperative apartment with his own help. He changed several bookshops in Prague and Kolín. In 1989, he was a driving force behind the Velvet Revolution in Kolín, providing the window of the bookshop in the week immediately after 17 November for the display of contemporary leaflets and posters. After 1990 he privatised the U Zlaté kosy bookshop in Kolín and ran it as a family business, the Petr Král Bookshop and Antiquarian Bookshop. Since 2010 it has been part of the Kosmas company. Since the beginning of the 1990s, he was repeatedly elected to the Kolín City Council and served as a councillor of Kolín for several terms. He became a member of the active military reserves.