From an officer to a stoker in the boiler room
Download image
Miroslav Pavel was born on May 16, 1939 in Olomouc. His parents, Miroslav and Miroslava Pavel, joined the Communist Party shortly after the war. Miroslav trained as a blacksmith during the 1950s and continued his distance learning at the Secondary Industrial School in Olomouc. In 1958 he joined the non-commissioned officer school in Tábor as part of basic military service and at the same time also became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In the army, he gradually developed into the rank of captain. He served as a company technician on crews in Olomouc and nearby Přáslavice. On August 21, 1968, he witnessed the occupation of the barracks by the Soviet military, and because he did not agree with this invasion, he was expelled from the party two years later and discharged from the army. Until the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he worked in manual labour positions, of which the longest period of fifteen years as a stoker in the boiler room of the Olomouc University Hospital. His wife Miroslava and daughter Miroslava also had a problem with the regime’s bullying. When the Military Revival Association was established in 1990, which was to unite soldiers with a similar fate, Miroslav joined it and in 2021 he was still a member.
