Jiří Ryba

* 1938

  • "I don't see any reason to regret it, nor any reason to be right." - "And was it any good to you?" - "That I was a social equal to my co-workers, they were workers, I just wasn't. By joining the Communist Party, there was an equalization."

  • "I went on a date from a restricted area. There was a party in a park in Plana near Mariánské Lázně, I jumped the fence and arranged a date there. I wore sweatpants, which is a terrible act, to get rid of the uniform and wear civilian clothes. And I walked about a kilometer into town for a date. I was already at the house where I was supposed to have my date. And all of a sudden, right across from me - this is a bad coincidence - my superior, the company sergeant major, was walking under a lamp. He asked what I was doing there. I said I was here on a date with a girl. Of course, I was immediately sentenced to three days in jail. I was so bold, or maybe I was in love, that I went out on a date even from that jail. That stunk. If I'd been caught, it would have been a matter for the prosecutor and the court. It all worked out fine, it was just a move to the line."

  • "The change happened when my older brother and I were finishing compulsory schooling. Because we were good learners, my dad wanted us not to work with our hands like he did, craft is hard work. He saved the new political situation by his own wise decision. He knew that we wouldn't be able to go to college as the offspring of a tradesman. He instructed himself and said he would do it for us, and became a worker in a brickyard. He went to do harder work than painting. And my brother actually got into grammar school, I got into glass school, my sister got into teaching school."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Liberec, 26.09.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:33:02
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

The father sacrificed his work under communism, the son became a successful glassmaker

Jiří Ryba in 1957
Jiří Ryba in 1957
photo: Archive of the witness

Jiří Ryba was born on 8 September 1938 in Stará Paka, where he spent his childhood and the Second World War. After the communists came to power, his father decided to leave his trade as a painter and go to work in a brickyard so that his children could study. He graduated from the glass school in Železný Brod, majoring in fused sculpture. Under the auspices of the school and later the Maják cooperative, he worked with the glass artist Jan Černý. In the early 1970s, under his influence, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In the 1980s, Jiří Ryba began to devote himself mainly to his own glass work. Before the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he resigned from the Communist Party. Afterwards, he exhibited in galleries as a freelance glass artist and sold his works to the world. In 2023 he lived in Lomnice nad Popelkou. We were able to film the story of the witness thanks to the support of Lasvit.