Miroslav Nepodal

* 1930

  • "I know that they always invited me there and talked to me to see if I would be willing to work with them, and I said that my focus was completely different, so somehow I don't remember signing anything, but I know that when I came back afterwards and I was already in a normal job, that I, I was also invited to Bartholomějská Street twice." "And that was somewhere in the late seventies?" "That was after the year 1968, I was asked about some people, because we had some military graduates doing an internship, they were doing a technical military college, I think in Brno, and at that time I was also asked about them, what they were doing there and what they were doing and all that sort of thing. I remember I was sitting there in a small room in the Bartolomějská, right, there were two comrades in civilian clothes sitting opposite me, one over the other, asking me questions, so I really didn't know what they were interested in, apparently everything was recorded, and then they let me go, and then I think I was there again."

  • "There was a unit in Pankrác Prison where they kept political prisoners, we called it a prison project, because some of the experts, if they didn't express themselves politically in the right way, got arrested. They were put in prison. Well, then I used to go with them because the factory was giving them work to do in the prison, so I used to go there for consultations, I had an ID card and I went through the gatehouse, I showed it to them, they opened the barred gate for me, there were several of them, and they gave me an escort up to the room where the consultation was going on. I was sitting on one side of the table and the people who were arrested were on the other side, and there was a guard watching, keeping an eye on us, so that we wouldn't have any other than technical conversations. That's how it was. I even went to prison."

  • "But, as they say, the biggest slice of restrained bread, various institutions began to take an interest in me. Political ones, too. They always slipped me an application form and I said: I'm into technology, and if I wanted to do politics, I'd already have I don't know how many stars, and if you want me to do technology well, then leave politics aside."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 10.06.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:57:40
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 17.06.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:56:18
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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An engineer without a degree

Miroslav Nepodal
Miroslav Nepodal
photo: Witness´s archive

Miroslav Nepodal was born on 2 March 1930 in Prague to parents from southern Bohemia. The family was not in any way sympathetic to communism and Miroslav Nepodal therefore did not have the cadre qualifications to study. After primary school, he trained as a fine mechanic and eventually graduated from a secondary technical school. Although he did not have a university degree, thanks to his talents and abilities he made a name for himself in the field of designing devices for aviation and other fields, participated in solving important state tasks, often secret, and also travelled abroad extensively - to the Soviet Union, China, and even France. As an expert, he was so needed that his superiors tolerated his reluctance to join the Communist Party. However, he did not escape the interest of the security forces. During the military service, he was recruited by military counter-intelligence as an informant under the code name Aktovka (Briefcase). State Security tried to use him from the 1970s onwards, and his file was terminated and put in the archives in 1984. Throughout his life he stuck mainly to what was close to his heart: technology. He retired in 1991 with eighteen patents to his credit. To this day (2024) he was living happily in Modřany in a house built by his parents.