"My father got visitors, German soldiers who were Protestant pastors in civilian life. There were much more Protestants in Germany than in Czechoslovakia. So there were pastors as well and those would visit father. And it was difficult to say: ‘Out, I don’t want you here!’ He couldn’t do it. They came to chat with a colleague. The problem was, there was a shortage of coal, we were trying to spare as much as we could, the coal was crappy so only one room was heated, that one where we lived. So there was no other option but to invite such people to the parlour and sometimes, it was annoying because from time to time, there were proponents and backers of that great role of the German nation, but there was a man, an officer and a doctor. And he immediately announced to my dad that he is German Christian, I don’t know whether he belonged to the so-called Confessing Church who opposed Hitler’s attitude towards the Jews. So this man announced that he has it in writing, that for these reasons, he cannot join the SS. Never. And I remember this man, he would visit often, and I remember such a moment, at the very end of the war, my mom was sitting at her sewing machine and she was sewing the Union Jack and the American, I mean, flag, in a smaller size. These flags, including the Soviet one, and he sat there like that… and that’s what my father told me later, I dont’t remember it myself, that he asked him whether we are not afraid of the Russians. And father told him that nothing worse than what had happened until then can happen to us.”
„And then there was that crash with the police line there at the crossroad. And it was indeed pretty unpleasant there. My son told me later that when they pressed the crowds from behind, with those giant nets pulled in front of trucks, they pushed and there were police against them, using their batons, and my son was arrested, well, not arrested but taken, and they put him into that police bus. He was watching it from the outside and he was glad for being held in custody. That he did not have to be in that crowd out there. That was a damn big pressure. Next to me, a lady stood at some sort of pillar there on the left and ske said: ‘I’ve just bought some eggs’. There was a damn pressure there, I was surprised that they did not push us to some shop window. And then they started letting us out in groups. There was not that passage like today, it was open from the street as well, like, arcades. So there stood the cops on both sides, they made such a passage, and they would let a group through and when I went there with a few others, already at the end, they picked a young guy, a smallish one, and they kept beating him until he went through that passage.”
„And he led this stupid debate with me. He ranted something about socialism and I don‘t know what else, that sort of talk. I sat there for about three quarters of an hour or for an hour. Annoying… listenong only to those clichés about safety, socialism and enemies… this sort of banter. It was boring, it was demeaning. I was looking forward to getting out of there, out of that room, out of that building, but the feeling of joy was not there. It was rather a sort of disgust, as if when one is sick in his stomach. But, that was the end of it all. And nobody bothered me ever more. Nobody bothered my father who signed the Charter either, even through Jiřina Šiklová passed those books coming from abroad though his place. There was a relay station of sorts at his place, bags, maybe two bags full of books. But my father was so naïve that, for instance, he called me saying ‚Hi Tomáš, come over and have a look, there could be something.’ And he thought that they did not know about that.”
“And the election results… they are what they are…. I think that it shows the fundamental, entirely innate fault of democracy. That the democracy premise is that people would be democrats, that they would be educated in politics. That they would educate themselves in politics. And I, now I live in a village with my second wife so I’m closer to the ‘pub demographics’, and sometimes, I say to myself: ‘So those people will go and vote…’ and that’s the education which the Enlightenment counted on, that schools and education would elevate the humankind. But even the educated people, those who went to schools… education may be something more… they do not need to be necessarily wise when they are doing only… simply, when some other ideology prevails.
Today’s religion is obviously totally out. It has its reasons, it has its advantages that religion is not the main ideology. But today’s religion is economy and I am not sure whether it would be able to deal with the innate and fundamental fault of democracy. That it was a faulty assumption in that Enlightenment, that it will be easy to overcome.”
“I wanted to go to the Gymnasium (‘elite’ high school) but they did not let me because my father was a pastor. And they told him straight away: ‘you’re a pastor, your son cannot study’. So I went to the Teacher’s Music Institute, I studied piano, organ and double bass. I had to play an orchestra instrument so I picked double bass. They accepted me there even though it was a high school as well. And, again, it depended on people’s attitude. When the headmaster heard that I was from a pastor’s family, he had me accepted, too.”
„And I got involved a bit because our pastor, a bit younger than I was, transported those flyers. I rode with him in his car, we parted at about 11 pm, he drove away and they arrested him in the morning. They came for him, he described it later, how on every stair… the secret cops stood, not in uniforms, and then they took him away. He went to the court and was sentenced to fifteen months in jail. There were more people jailed of those I knew and I was taken for an interrogation, too.”
“When the second proclamation came out in February, yes, it was February… not a proclamation, second list of the signatories… and one day, I came home from work and my wife was cleaning the window in that smallish bedroom of ours, and she gave me the silent treatment. I wondered what was going on and she did not speak with me. And as the right husband should know what he had committed, what he had done, I really had no clue. And then she understood that I probably did not know so she asked: ‘Why haven’t you told me that you signed that?’ And I said: I did not sign anything.’ She said: ‘Don’t tell me, you’re on the list.’ So she pulled that out, she brought it from work, she worked in Krč in the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, so she took it out and there it stood: Tomáš Růžička, mathematician.“
Tomáš Růžička was born on the 8th December of 1937 in Veselí in the Vysočina region. He was the youngest of four sons of Miroslav Růžička, an evangelical pastor. His mother Jarmila was the daughter of Josef Jaroslav Filipi, a painter and a close friend of Herbert Masaryk, the son of the first Czechoslovak president. Her brother Bohdan left for the United Kingdom during WWII and he joined the Czechoslovak army there. As a result, Jarmila’s parents were imprisoned in the internation camp in Svatobořice for three years. At the beginning of the 1950’s, when Tomas finished his compulsory school attendance, he was not able to go to a high school so he started studying piano at a teachers’ institute and at the same time, evening secondary school for workers where he was tolerated despite his background. After graduating from high school, he went on to study at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the Charles University. Then, he got a job at the Institute of Physics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences where he spent sixteen years as a successful researcher. At the beginning of the 1960’s, he started participating in the reform movement both in the Institute of Physics and in the Protestant church. He had a close and friendly relationship with Ladislav Hejdánek, philosopher and later, spokesman for the Charter 77. In 1971, he was interrogated by the State Security for the first time, for the second time in 1984 when the secret police tried to recruit him to cooperate (meaning being a snitch for them) but he strictly refused. At the beginning of 1977, his name was listed among the signatories of Charter 77. At first, it was a misunderstanding but later on, he did indeed sign the Charter. He had to leave the Academy and for many years, he worked as a stoker. He used to meet many notable dissidents; along with his father and his aunt, fellow Charter signatories, they translated and retyped the then banned books, mostly on philosophy. He regularly took part in the anti-government demonstrations, he was on the Národní třída on the 17th November of 1989 [this demonstration was the precipitating event of the revolution].
After the Velvet Revolution, he became the chair of the board of directors in the Závody průmyslové automatizace [Industrial Automation Company] where he had been working. In 1992, he returned to the Academy of Sciences as the secretary of the vicechair where he worked until 2007. Then he returned to the Institute of Physics for two more years.
At the time of recording, he was retired and spent his time with his wife alternately in Prague and in the countryside. He has three children.
Josef Jaroslav Filipi, Tomáš Růžička's grandfather and a close friend of Herbert Masaryk, they met when they studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. During the Protectorate, he and his whole family were detained in the internment camp in Svatobořice. He wrote a chronicle about the imprisonment and illustrated it with his own drawings.
Josef Jaroslav Filipi, Tomáš Růžička's grandfather and a close friend of Herbert Masaryk, they met when they studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. During the Protectorate, he and his whole family were detained in the internment camp in Svatobořice. He wrote a chronicle about the imprisonment and illustrated it with his own drawings.
