“For the whole week we wouldn´t meet anybody. We have just been sitting there, there were those metal stools, beds were being stored at one place in the corner. The room was small, you couldn´t sit, you couldn´t walk, they would give you food through a small hatch. There was a toilet and a washbasin. So I was thinking that I would rather not eat at all as there were six other men with me. The worst part was that they were all smokers as I wasn´t used to it. And it would get on your nerves of course. I was telling myself how the kids were handling the investigation. So it gave a migraine. And at that moment I stated to argue with the Lord: 'How have you rewarded me! And I have been trying so hard!' And then I heard a voice: 'It is easy to preach to praise the Lord in every situation, even if the times are hard. So start now! Here in the prison? For all the evil? Not for the evil, but in the evil you will praise the Lord.' And I pulled myself together: 'I am not happy, Lord, but I praise you even in this jail as you know what is best for me.' Suddenly peace entered my heart. Even my headache was gone and in a low voice I began to sing the songs of the catholic youth. And the guys were wondering I was in such a high spirit. And I felt good, I felt I have been freed. It was an amazing experience.”
“As the judge issued the sentence there were sixty young people and the same amount of older people. He read the sentence and then he glanced at the beautiful, fresh and unspoiled young people whom I have been leading for several years. A then he said: 'As for you, the young people, I am appealing on you to go to the streets and to influence our youth who are smashing our lamp-posts, who are making mess and vandalising our city. You have to help them.' And everyone was wondering what was going on. He condemned the case and then he would send them to the streets. Radio Free Europe covered the trial for two weeks with several reports every day, as one ot the students gave detailed report on what was going on at the court. And they were making fun of the justice in Czechoslovakia as they would condemn something and at the same time they would urge you to carry on. At least that was the impression. So thank God it came to a good end, three months of suspended senstence. And I never got so many flowers as in the courtroom, nor while I was being ordained neither while serving my first mass.”
“Most of all they tried to persuade the big farmer as they supposed that if they would break the smaller ones will follow. As it had not been working in 1959 came tractors and by force they wanted to rozorat meze. It happened just at noon. My mother was on a hill with her neighbour, they were doing something there, working, and when they began to plow the neighbor made the sign of the cross and she would lie in front of the tractor. Traktorista would speed up. My mother was yelling: 'Run, he´s going to roll over you!' And neighbour said: 'Lie next to me.' And all of the sudden about a hundred women came running, they were gathering at the hill. And they were armed. I don´t what they all have got, pitchforks and clubs. And of course, policemen were also there. So it was quite a drama. I remember as the tractors were advancing and the headmaster have been telling us, 'Kids, there will be fields so vast, it will be beautiful.' And on the next day he cried: 'My female students were beating comrade chairman with clubs.' Fortunately, he didn´t report for if he would the girls who were 18 or older could go to jail. But he was a local man, a reasonable one, so he didn´t report it. However, it was quite a drama.”
Adam Rucki was born on January 8th 1951 in the village of Bukovec in Slezské Beskidy. His father was a farmer. Together with other farmers from the village for years he had been refusing to join the coop. The Collective farm in Bukovec had been founded only after the 1970. In 1969 Adam Rucki began to study at the temporarily reopened Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology in Olomouc. After being ordained in 1974 he had to attend the mandatory military service. As a politically unreliable person he had been ordered to the labour battalion building bomb shelters at airports. After the military service he was a chaplain in Havířov, Frýdek and then in Třinec for seven years. In 1984 he was arrested as he was ogranising private bible studies lectures for young people. He has been given suspended sentence. For a year and a half he couldn´t work as a priest and had been making his means as a worker. Until the collapse of the totalitarian regime he served in Valašské Klobouky, then he was a priest in the Zlín region. For ten years he was a lecturer at the Archbishop’s seminary in Olomouc. Since 2005 he is a vicar in the Diocese of Ostrava-Opava.
