Kryl and Hutka opened the doors for me
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Milan Ohnisko was born in Brno on 16 July 1965 to a family of a designer and an office worker as the elder of two brothers. His parents did not oppose the regime in any manner and brought up their children so as to accept the same stance. The witness started a grammar school in Brno but left after a brief period; then he started a librarian high school but left again soon. He then worked in assistant worker positions from then until November 1989. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s his older friends introduced him to the unofficial recordings of Karel Kryl and Jaroslav Hutka and samizdat literature. He wished to meet Brno’s dissident and became involved in anti-regime activities thanks to Petr Pospíchal in the early 1980s - he operated as an interface between the Brno and Prague dissidents, typed and distributed unofficial documents and samizdat, canvassed petition signatories and so on. Due to that he was detained several times, investigated and monitored by the StB. The last two occasions when he was detained were on 21 August 1989 and shortly after 17 November 1989. After the Velvet Revolution he got involved in Brno’s Civic Forum, working as a correspondent of the Brno chapter of the Eastern European Information Agency. He later managed a publishing house, operated a bookstore and worked as a publishing editor. He relocated from Brno to Prague four years ago and he currently works as an editor of the Tvar literary magazine. His long-term dissident activities earned him the certificate of a member of anti-communist resistance in September 2014.
