“I have been serving as a Greek Orthodox priest in Františkovy Lázně already for 63 years. What else should I tell you? That I am happy here and that I have served our believers, who are composed mainly of Volhynian Czechs, Russyns from Carpathian Ruthenia and Slovaks. We are a multinational parish.”
“We are still walking in the skirmish line. They are already firing at us and we have to march forward and to the left – the first, second, and third tank are now on fire. Soldiers ran out of some of them and found a cover somewhere. Our third battalion entered the forest with our famed hooray shout and we encountered no resistance. We thus advanced some half a kilometre into that forest and as the shots were flying at us from all directions, all of a sudden our soldiers started dropping one by one. The Germans had let us pass and then they started killing us from the back. We were inexperienced, and when I – I was the leader of this team – saw what was happening in the centre, I ordered them: ´Guys, follow me!´ There was a slope and a stream running under it. I rolled down to that stream, and so did the others before they got hit and wounded.”
“I was not even seventeen years old at that time. In one recruitment office they refused me, telling me to go home because mummy would need me. In the other office I added some years to my real age, and thus they enlisted me and assigned me to the infantry battalion.”
“Speaking of Činčár: one day he invited us to some party; I met Richard there, too. Činčár was visiting the spa often, and in spite of that – the way it was then – he would always come to the church. He wouldn’t spend the whole time there, but he would light a candle, for instance. We would then meet after the mass somewhere in the town. One day he told me: ´Man, mind what you say, because what you did last time, if some cop had been there…´ by this he indicated that he was not that cop, ´you would have been finished.´ I have to say that I heeded his advice a little bit, because I realized that I could not just criticize everything openly since that might have bad consequences for me.”
“I celebrated my first mass in Františkovy Lázně on September 1, 1949. The parish had been established already right after the war, but the number of believers was very small. They were mostly people from Carpathian Ruthenia and eastern Slovakia. At the beginning we held masses mainly in the Slavic tradition ,which is paradoxical, because while I had been in Volhynia, I knew the Czech mass the way my uncle Antonín Zajíc celebrated it. And we also taught religion classes, in Czech, naturally, which certainly did not lack in quality, because my uncle-priest Antonín Zajíc was a teacher of religion as well, and he even took some examinations for that. This also helped him in his following life, which was quite interesting. We can talk about it later.”
“I have been a member of the secret resistance organization Blaník since 1943 when I was seventeen. It was named after the knights from the Blaník Mountain, and it was a strongly patriotic organization. My involvement consisted of serving as a messenger to the commander Emil Cilc, who later became a general. Another general came from our village, too, and Česká Huleč is thus the birthplace of two generals. One of them was mobilized when the war began, but it was found out that people of other nationalities were untrustworthy. Stalin decided that he would not tolerate anybody, and every trifle was punished in one way or another, like being sent to Siberia, and things like that. My task was thus working as a messenger for general Cilc, who was the commander of the military part of Blaník. Blaník had its cells in most of the Czech villages in Volhynia. They also published a magazine which was called Hlasatel.”
ThDr. Jan Křivka was born October 12, 1926 in Česká Huleč in Volhynia. His parents Jan and Anna, née Zajícová, ran a dairy business in the village. Jan’s father graduated from the higher school of agriculture in Krinica, and his mother studied a Russian grammar school in Zhytomyr, where her brother Antonín Zajíc served as a Greek Orthodox priest. During WWI the father worked as a scribe at the military court in St. Petersburg and he returned home to Volhynia when the war ended. He was reunited with his parents in Huleč where they had to move from their native Ivaniče. Here he met Anna Zajícová, who later became his wife and mother of their three children Tamara, Jan and Marie.
Jan Křivka was actively involved in the illegal organization Blaník during the occupation. In 1944 he joined the 1st independent Czechoslovak brigade, which was transformed into the 1st army corps after the reception of new recruits from Volhynia and Carpathian Ruthenia. He completed a school for noncommissioned officers and with the rank of a lance corporal he took part in the defensive combat in Poland and in the fighting for the Dukla Pass. During the last combat operation which attempted to liberate the Dukla Pass he was wounded and transported to a hospital in Lvov. After his recovery he joined the mixed air division which was formed in Przemyśl in Poland. The end of the war and the treaty on the exchange of citizens between Czechoslovakia and the USSR made it possible for thousands of Volhynian Czechs to return to their original homeland and Jan Křivka’s family was among them. With the exception of his younger sister Marie, they all settled in Vroutek in western Bohemia, where they were allotted a farmstead. Marie followed her love for a teacher from Kharkov whom she married. After recertification of his secondary school studies Jan decided to study theology at the Orthodox seminary in Karlovy Vary. He completed this study in 1954 in Prešov. He married Božena Zajíčková, who was a teacher in Vroutek, and in 1949 he was ordained a priest by archbishop Jelevferij and appointed to administer the parish in Františkovy Lázně and Aš. He was a member of the National Socialist Party until 1948. In the 1970s he was under the surveillance of the Secret Police (StB). During nearly sixty years of serving as a priest he managed to repair the church and the parish house in Františkovy Lázně and in Karlovy Vary, and to establish communities in Sokolov, Rovná, Oloví and Chodov. He also assisted in contacting people who re-emigrated from Chernobyl, and he helped to organize humanitarian aid for them. Jan Křivka has always kept his native Volhynia in his heart - he was involved in the establishing of the Association of Czechs from Volhynia and their Friends and he initiated the construction of a memorial to the murdered people from Český Malín. He was a member of the parliamentary delegation that was present during the unveiling ceremony of this monument. Jan Křivka passed away on October, the 11th, 2013.
