Pavel Matějíček

* 1948

  • "In about my second year, I was invited by the principal and my class teacher to the principal's office. I didn't know what they wanted me to do because I hadn't done anything severe, and the class teacher read me a letter asking the municipality and the Communist Party to expel me from the school, saying that I was the son of a revanchist and all that crap. I actually studied 1964-68. I wasn't laughing, I was worried because, at that time, all kinds of things were happening, and I was going to get kicked out of school. The good thing was that our class teacher, his name was Ing. Poleno, said: 'I know this, I studied in Germany, and then they didn't acknowledge it.' Because he graduated from a forestry college in Germany during the war, he also spoke perfect German, so he had to repeat his studies here in Bohemia. And I know he did it in two or three years without any problem."

  • "They were notified that there was going to be a raid. My father's mother, who lived in Lipová was notified. She got a telegram that made no sense, I remember that. Something about cherries ripening in the spring or fall or winter, something like that, it was incoherent. So the telegram didn't really make sense, so my mother said they'd go there in the morning. And when they went in the morning, they saw from the hill in Nahošovice that something was happening there, cars, soldiers, militia, I don't know what. So they didn't let them go there anymore because it was closed, so they understood they were detained."

  • "They surrounded the street, the house, from the back, because there are gardens in the back, and knocked on the door. My father went in to open it and asked for the password, and my mother told him not to go crazy, that it was a stranger and that something was going on, because they could see from the window, from the bedroom, that there was some movement. Well, they didn't open the door, so they shot the door, like at the lock, and they got in. I still remember, as a kid, that the door was riddled with bullets, then they replaced it with a normal door."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Olomouc, 03.07.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:12:35
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Parents risked everything for the sake of freedom

Witness during filming for Memory of Nations, 2023
Witness during filming for Memory of Nations, 2023
photo: Post Bellum

Pavel Matějíček was born on 5 January 1948 in Přerov as the youngest of five children of Alois and Marie Matějíček from the village of Hradčany. In December 1949, his parents provided shelter for members of the Hory Hostýnská anti-communist resistance group, operating in the Bystřice and Holešov regions, but also the vicinity of Hranice and Přerov. After the group was compromised, Hradčany was surrounded by police forces on the night of 9-10 December 1949 and during a large-scale raid, many people were arrested, including the witness’s father. Alois Matějíček was subjected to harsh interrogations in the prison in Uherské Hradiště. But unlike the other supporters of the group, he was released from custody due to favourable circumstances and was not tried. Nevertheless, he and his entire family were harassed by the communist regime. His youngest son, Pavel Matějíček, was only able to study at a secondary forestry school at the other end of the country, in Trutnov, North Bohemia, where nobody knew him. After completing his military service in 1968-70, he worked briefly for the forestry administration, but for most of his professional life, he worked as a dispatcher for ČSAD. He and his wife raised two daughters, and at the time of filming (2023), he lived in Tučín in the Přerov region.