PhDr. Jaroslav Mucha

* 1925

  • „The punishment was not very strict, an imprisonment for five or seven years so in average around one year. Everyone was sentenced, my father for around a year plus a fee. I don’t know if ten or twenty thousand, it was something like that. And so he went to prison. In Prostějov there was a court of justice and a prison. And in the prison he was sentenced and experienced it. I haven’t been there so I don’t know the circumstances. When the trial began, and the prison ended, then there was the punishment my father had to leave his job. As I said he was in a cooperative named Družstevní podnik hostinský, he worked as an accountant and could have stayed there, but later he could only be a jumper.“

  • „Daddy was politically same as the Sokol members fundamentally against the regime. Totally against the regime. Also when they came to the festival of Sokols in 1948, father drove everyone from Kostelec, so obviously they visited the president Beneš in Sezimovo Ústí to support him. There were huge manifestations. Later when they returned from Kostelec, they had much inconvenience.“

  • „Daddy was politically same as the Sokol members fundamentally against the regime. Totally against the regime. Also when they came to the festival of Sokols in 1948, father drove everyone from Kostelec, so obviously they visited the president Beneš in Sezimovo Ústí to support him. There were huge manifestations. Later when they returned from Kostelec, they had much inconvenience.“

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    byt pamětníka, Praha 4 - Háje, 29.02.2016

    (audio)
    duration: 02:17:49
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Life is the most beautiful gift we ever get

PhDr. Jaroslav Mucha in 1979
PhDr. Jaroslav Mucha in 1979
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jaroslav Mucha was born on 25 December, 1925 in Kostelec na Hané as one of the twins in a family of Zdeněk Mucha. In 1930 - 1935 he attended elementary school in Kostelec in Haná. Along the lines of his daddy he was training in Sokol and later also devoted himself to scouting. The father Zdeněk was imprisoned due to anti-communist rebellion after elections in 1946, as he was engaged in a leaflet action. He was a big patriot and honoured the president Beneš. In the second half of 1960s he was rehabilitated. Jaroslav Mucha was thrown out of the army after 1969, as he sympathised with the petition Two thousand words. He left to work in a foundry. He sympathised with the dissent, although he never actively contributed to the movement. He studied the philosophical faculty of the Charles University in Prague. In 1993-2013 he taught German at the elementary school in Prague and retired in 2014. He lives in Prague 4.