František Postupa

* 1950

  • "We were occupying the school by strike, not by strike, but teaching took place, but we were occupying the school and [holding] a hunger strike. That was B, our class. And the A class, we agreed to walk [from Mýto] to Prague for [Palach's] funeral. They gave us news from the march, collected some petitions [on the way] to the funeral in Prague. The teachers - because they were, as I told you, the student school committee, it had been there since the '80s, when we abolished the CSM (Czechoslovak Youth Association) - [told us] that it was on us. They were going to teach and we were going to occupy the school and go on hunger strike. So that's how it went. No professor was swearing then, no bullying. We studied, we didn't eat, and we listened to the news at night."

  • "[I signed the collaboration] so I could go to Italy. I got a voucher from ROH (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement). So they called me to the chairman of the Communist Party organization in the whole of the Prumport for special tasks in the cadre department. There were two comrades sitting with him and that someone would definitely contact us there [in Italy]. They told me that they knew that I had done this and that in Vysoké Mýto [participated in the student occupation of the school after Jan Palach's self-immolation] and that I was listening to Free Europe, which everybody was listening to. So I'm supposed to tell what was done there [in Italy] by who with whom and how. I was afraid that they would even let me in. So I signed [the cooperation] and said I would keep quiet about it and so on. Then I got there - I'm an idiot for not calling - and I told them that I had travelled there, that's what I had arranged with the guide. I've been to Florence, to Rome, to Mantua. Well, mostly Florence and Siena. [I was] mainly interested in paintings and statues and things like that. So I told them and that I didn't see anybody there. Except that there was Malé Listy [the exiled successor to the Literary newspaper] at the hotel in Rome. But I didn't tell them that I had asked for them. They didn't check on us, nothing. Everybody came back from the trip, so I said to myself that they left me alone [State Security], but unfortunately they did not."

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    Hradec Králové, 24.03.2023

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    Hradec Králové, 26.01.2024

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He thought it would be a one-time thing. State Security did not leave him alone anymore

František Postupa with a scooter in 1954 in his native Hodonín near Nasavrky
František Postupa with a scooter in 1954 in his native Hodonín near Nasavrky
photo: Archive of František Postupa

František Postupa was born on 12 February 1950 to his parents Vlasta and František Postupa in the small village of Hodonín near Nasavrky. A joyful childhood was replaced by an adventurous adolescence in the more relaxed sixties, when in 1965 he entered the Secondary Industrial School of Construction in Vysoké Mýto. It was there that he experienced the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. In the school magazine he criticised the invasion and threw stones at the barracks. He was greatly affected by the self-immolation of Jan Palach. For his funeral, a part of the class walked from Mýto to Prague, and he and his classmates went on hunger strike and occupied the school for four days. The intention to study political science at the Prague Faculty of Philosophy was thwarted by the closure of the department under the onset of normalisation. The witness joined Průmstav as a construction manager. He travelled with a band, was interested in art, and educated himself. In 1978, he signed a cooperation agreement with the State Security Service in order to travel abroad. In the 1980s, he was active in dissent. He attended residential lectures, learned Serbo-Croatian, and translated books by banned authors. In 1984 he joined the Czechoslovak Socialist Party. From the mid-1980s onwards, he participated in many demonstrations and was interrogated several times. As a result, he lost his job. In 1988 he signed Charter 77. In 1989, before the Velvet Revolution, he visited Poland. He took part politically in the Velvet Revolution, co-founded the Civic Forum in Chrudim and from 1990 worked at the municipal office. He travelled through the countries of the former Yugoslavia, where he has many friends. He is self-critical about his cooperation with the State Security Service, which had his name in the category of candidate for secret cooperation and agent. In 2024 he lived in Chrudim.