Olivier Lichý

* 1960

  • “There was a Czech military car, with three border guards and two dogs, and when we arrived, they pointed a submachine gun at us. When you’re 11, that’s quite an experience. My parents didn’t need to explain it to me. When you’re 11, you understand things. When you’re 5, you don’t, but when you’re 11, you can see when they ask you to shut up at the border, when you wait 3 hours to cross the border, and when you do, they make you take off your shoes and socks to show that there’s nothing inside, you understand very quickly what a dictatorship is, and you appreciate even more what freedom and democracy are when you arrive in France."

  • “In 1990, there were still sokols abroad, and every 4 years we organised a meeting of them. That year, the slet took place in Paris and two months later, in July 1990, the Czech sokol came back into existence and organised a small slet in Prague. Obviously, we met there, and with a lot of emotion because, when we marched, there were lots of people around the parade and grandmothers who were crying and waving at us. It was a very emotional moment."

  • “My father started out in politics, but he was in a party opposed to the Communist Party. When the Communists came to power in 1948, they started putting people in prison because they didn’t think like them. My father lived in Znojmo, not very far from Austria, and as he had a friend who was a forest ranger, who knew the forest like the back of his hand, he knew exactly where to cross the border without being spotted by the customs officers. When the Communists started putting people in prison, the party my father belonged to organised escapes for people in prison, which then went through his network, as he had organised the whole thing. But the Czech police were no more stupid than my father was intelligent, so a few months later, the Communists came to power in February 1948, and by May 1948, he had already got a number of people to leave, but the Czech police managed to discover this network, and my father, whose father was a gendarme, was warned that the police were going to come and arrest him the next day. So he got his comrades together, because 3 people were with him to organise the escape route, so in May 1948, my father escaped, so as not to be imprisoned."

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    Paris, Česká škola bez hranic Paříž, 27.11.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 48:14
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Being part of Sokol already means being involved in politics, even if you get together to play volleyball or cards, or even eat knedlíky

Olivier Lichý in 2021
Olivier Lichý in 2021
photo: Post Bellum

Olivier Lichý is a French magistrate born in Paris in 1960. His father is Czech, from Znojmo [South Moravia], and his mother is French, from Paris. He tells the story of his father, a political opponent who fled the overthrow of the third Czechoslovak republic after the arrival of a communist regime in February 1948. After arriving in France, his father quickly joined the Sokol de Paris, a sports and patriotic association in which anti-Communist Czech refugees met. Olivier also took part in Sokol activities from the age of 13, practising volleyball, gymnastics and Czech folk dancing. He also recounts his childhood trips to Czechoslovakia, from 1967 onwards, where he became aware of living under a dictatorial regime. In 1986, he took part in a slet [mass gathering] organised in Zurich, then in Paris in 1990 and in Prague that same year, just after the fall of the Communist regime. Translated by DeepL