Jaroslav Kutiš

* 1945

  • "At that time I was at the rocket troops here in the Pilsen region, in Rokycany. Well, of course nobody was allowed to know, while half the country knew, but we as soldiers had to keep quiet, didn't we. Well, so the army..." - "And how long were you there?" - "Two years. Who didn't obey, paid for it." - "Like how?" - "Well, maybe he got, as they used to say, three days after duty. Normally the day job was as usually, and in the evening instead of going to the dormitory with the soldiers, you went to sleep in the prison. You packed up your blanket and went to sleep in the prison." - "And how did it go there? Same thing every day?" - "Every day the same. Warm-up in the morning when you weren't in prison, when you weren't in punishment, warm-up exercise, roll call, breakfast. Then there was some employment. So either there was shooting, or there was political training, or there was a mandatory inspection of something, and then there was practical stuff of some sort. And then in the evening or in the afternoon there was just some kind of chatting with the commanders."

  • "Those who didn't join the party, they tried to hurt them as much as possible. I was one of them. So at first I didn't want to join, then I had to, because the children were already big, so they became interested in employment. The younger one wanted to go to the technical school, the older one wanted to become a cook, and so I was just told that if I didn't join the party, they would make my life miserable. So during the year I didn't want to go, they showed me how. First of all, the job was different than what I wanted. And then I was there for a year, but then I left again a year later. Well, it wasn't easy. You had to be a little bit, not a hero, but go your own way and not look left and right."

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    Praha, 02.12.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:00:20
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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A man had to go his own way

Jaroslav Kutiš in 2019
Jaroslav Kutiš in 2019
photo: Stories of Our Neighbours

Jaroslav Kutiš was born on 12 April 1945 in Prague into a working-class family. From an early age he liked to play football, which he then devoted his whole life to as a player and later as a referee and coach. He trained as a turner at ČKD Prague and worked there. In 1964, he left to serve his military service at the rocket army. After his return he got married and from 1968 he worked in Prague Communications. He was involved in the protests in 1968 and the demonstrations in 1989, but according to his own words, he was also briefly a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In the 1990s Jaroslav worked for a funeral service.