Jan Nykl

* 1953

  • "Instead, on the night shift, I arrive in Vitkovice and there is a crowd of people, full of soldiers, guns, machine guns... A strange train and [the supervisor] says: 'You will take the train to Krnov.' ‘To Krnov? I don't even know the place.’ We didn't take trains to Opava anymore, because I didn't have any knowledge there. We used to go there to change locomotives, so I was in Opava many times, but we Ostravians didn't normally take trains to Opava, and not to Krnov at all. And he says, 'No, that's a special train,' and there was a Honda there, and I went on it with Sergei, Sergei was the pusher, and now there were a lot of people flocking to the locomotive. The train commander, a Russian, some major. He told me he was coming from Kazan. A telephone wire stretched across the train. Everybody had a crank phone like... Everybody rushed to the station. I said there can only be four of them at a checkpoint. There's never more than one. There was the trainmaster, some engineer, an instructor from Krnov, who was also my pilot, so that I could go on the track to Krnov at all, and myself and a helper. And the others sat in the back with someone from the railway. Well, what am I carrying? You could see it under the sails - six wagons of rockets and a lot of wagons... The train must have had forty wagons. That was a long, heavy train. It was all field kitchens, passenger cars for the soldiers. Every car was guarded by a Russian with a machine gun on every corner. That means that I was carrying rockets, huge rockets on big flat cars. I say, shit... and to Krnov... It's clear that they're taking it to Libava, and what could it be but atomic rockets..."

  • "We arrived in Zábřeh, took the fast train to Prague. It takes a few minutes to get to Zábřeh [from Šumperk], about two stops. The fast train to Prague from Zábřeh takes two or three hours. And now he was describing to me technically what was going to happen. He had a suitcase full of stuff and now he was explaining to me, 'Don't cry here, I need to explain some things to you. Here's why I'm going to burn myself. Here's what I have written down.' He had a statement, even written on a cyclostyle membrane. That is, so it could be reproduced. He had it all worked out. I don't know how he got the membrane. He had a letter written to his parents, a letter, I don't know, to... But he had his ID, he had a doctor's note saying he'd been examined, that he was healthy, so that someone wouldn't say he'd done it because he was sick, like before. He had a psychiatrist's report that he was healthy, that he wasn't disturbed, that he wasn't doing it for any reason. Because he claimed that they tried to convince Palach before he died to call it off, that he had some other reasons. Or whatever. So he was saying, 'That's not going to happen to me.' And also, 'I'm going to die today. I'm so insured I'm going to die. I'm just gonna be dead today.' So he was like, 'I'm gonna put some parquet paste on, which is a crazy flammable stuff.' He was wearing all woollen clothes. 'I'm gonna soak it all in petrol, and that's what I'm gonna put on. And I'll still have a bottle of acid in my hand if I should happen to survive, I'll drink some more of it. So I'll be dead [100 percent]."

  • "Early in the morning, someone wakes me up in my room: 'Jane, wake up!' - 'What's wrong?' - 'I'm going to Prague.' - 'What for?' - 'I'm going to burn myself, come with me.' But I wasn't completely surprised, because we knew it, but that he would tell me that... that I should go with him or something... No way. I didn't even know he was gonna burn himself. That's like people were saying that he would... that maybe or maybe or something. But there's no way I knew. But I got up and got dressed and went with him."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Ostrava, 09.04.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:49:44
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Ostrava, 16.05.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:24:00
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Jan Zajíc remained in my heart, but I did not feel worthy of his legacy

Witness in 1966
Witness in 1966
photo: Archive of the witness

Jan Nykl was born on 24 February 1953 in the hospital in Ostrava-Zábřeh. His grandfather Josef Rapač declared his German nationality during the war. After the liberation he was interned in the Urals. Jan Nykl’s parents came from Ostrava. His father worked first in the Ostrava brewery and later in the automation plant of the Ostrava-Karviná Revír (OKR). His mother trained as a weaver in Ústí nad Orlicí. In September 1968 Jan Nykl entered the Secondary Railway and Secondary Industrial School in Šumperk. There he met Jan Zajíc, who decided to follow the example of Jan Palach and set himself on fire in the passageway of house No. 39 on Wenceslas Square on 25 February 1969. Jan Nykl accompanied him on that Tuesday morning, hoping to talk him out of the act. Subsequently, after Zajíc’s self-immolation, Jan Nykl faced an investigation for the crime of assisting suicide. In April 1969, the investigation was dropped. In order to finish his studies, he was forced to become a founding member of the Socialist Youth Union (SSM). Eventually, in 1971, the witness transferred to Breclav, where he completed his education with a high school diploma. After school he entered military service. As an “ajznboňák” (Railwayman) he had it shortened to five months. In 1974 Jan Nykl got a job at the Ostrava Locomotive Depot. In December 1983 he witnessed the deployment of nuclear weapons carriers in Czechoslovakia. After 1989, he joined the Frýdek-Místek Locomotive Depot, where he stayed until 2013. In 2024 he lived with his wife in the village of Janovice-Bystré.