“When Haas (he was a Sudeten German who could understand Czech) realized that we had not been directly involved in the Sokol resistance movement, he decided that we certainly must have been listening to forbidden radio broadcast (as Rundfunkverbrechen). When I denied it, he started beating me with his fists over my ears, and then he whipped me with a ferule so hard that for several days I had to lie on my back covered with cold towels from my fellow prisoners. My father was taken to the Pankrác prison in Prague for court trial in June, and he was sentenced to five years of imprisonment, and two weeks later I got sentenced to two years for complicity, and my mother, whom Haas had arrested for complicity as well, was acquitted.”
“In spring 1945 I experienced another instance of God’s protection during the time of air raids on nearby cities Donauworth and Ulm. At night there were squadrons of bomber planes flying over our camp and we were locked up there without a chance to take shelter in the basement of the neighboring factory. But we have remained under the protection of the Most High, as to quote the lyrics of one spiritual song.”
Jiří Otter was born July 31, 1919 in Pilsen in a family of an evangelical pastor who came from Vienna. He studied a humanities-oriented grammar school which he completed in 1938. His subsequent study at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University became interrupted when Czech universities were forced to close down. He passed a deacon’s examination and he became a teacher of religion. Since he had friends among members of the Sokol organization, he and his father were arrested and Jiří was sentenced to two years of imprisonment. He was interned in various prisons in Germany. After the war he graduated from English at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University and from theology at the Comenius Evangelical Faculty of Theology. He spent two semesters at Assembly’s College in Belfast. In 1948 Jiří became a pastor of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren in the congregation in Mariánské Lázně. He received his doctoral degree in 1953. From 1965 he served as a secretary in the head office of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. He taught English and German at the theological faculty. Jiří retired in 1999, but he still continues in his biblical work. In 2014 he was the eldest candidate in Czech Republic’s local administration elections.
