“There was this guy from Mikulášek brother's band who brought songs by Bodhan Mikulášek, which were totally banned at that time. Mikolášek brothers couldn't find a single venue where they would be allowed to play. And we got together, without any musical background, with no training at all. Yet we would win all the band competitions while serving in the army! Which was great, as just the fact that a song by Bohdan Mikolášek would be played during this Ostrava's political song army band competition and that we would win the whole thing, that was something utterly absurd! But no one in the army could imagine that something like this could ever happen. And there was one more thing: one of the boys in our band was a chairman of the regiment's Czechoslovak Socialist Union of Youth, so we had our backs covered and we could make this beautiful music.”
“November 1989 brought this immense freedom and this immense thaw. As after you would cross the Rubicon, and you would declare your allegiance to what had been happening, to accept the fact that there was no way back, you would liberate yourself completely, despite the fact that we didn't know what the result would be. And it was uncertain what the outcome would be, for quite a long time. Even during the first week after November 17th it was unclear whether the communist leadership would call the militia, which had been mobilised, or whether the army would be given the task to maintain order. Václavík, who had been a minister back then, said that all he needed was an order to do it, and after that, it would take just two fighter jets flying low over the Wenceslas Square and the crowds would just disperse.``
“Before the general strike of November 27th, 1989, on Friday, there was this meeting of the Faculty of Textile Engineering TU Liberec staff in the big auditorium, where the school management prohibited employees from joining the general strike, as this would lead to production being ceased which would lead to enormous financial losses, so the strike had to be avoided at all costs. But of course there was this student strike, but they insisted that the university couldn´t join the general strike. On Monday, there was another employee assembly, where quite a different strategy was being put forward. 'Yes, we will support the strike, we will march in the front, walking all the way with the people to the Peacekeeper's Square ('Náměstí bojovníků za mír', today's Beneš Square). And we said: 'No, we would go there. You can go as well, we won't keep you from doing that, but we will walk by ourselves.' So there were those situations which were quite absurd.”
“There was this effort by the representatives of the Communist party to infiltrate the students and to lead them away from the Civic Forum, so that the students would be the force that would stand in the forefront of this new democratization process, together with the Communist Party. And the result of this effort was that there were these two so-called advisors among the students, who were, I suppose – I didn't hear this from them – who were sent by the Party, who were quite intense while doing this. So even the students would listen to them for some time. But we managed to convince the students that this wasn't the way. That to profit from what had happened on November 17th, we just couldn't join ranks with the Communist party.”
“It was quite chaotic back then. As there were those groups being established which were quite self-appointed. Sometimes, it was quite funny to see who would try to pose as a Civic Forum representative. To our Civic Forum committee came this director of this special branch, who had been fired the year before due to incompetence. And he came stating that he had been oppressed during the rule of the totalitarian regime, claiming that he was a Civic Forum representative for the Faculty of Engineering. These things just happened. So there was this quite a large group which decided that we would be dealing with school representatives. So we were forced to state that there would be certain people representing the Civic Forum. And there were four of us.”
Jan Skrbek was born on January 4, 1953 in Turnov. His father, Břetislav, taught at Turnov’s grammar school, while his mother, Věra, was an elementary school teacher. During his lifetime, he had been drawing inspiration from both his grandfathers: František Skrbek had been imprisoned in a concentration camp during the war, Antonín Šipka underwent a perilous journey through Russia as a Czechoslovak legion member. In 1968, Jan started to study at a grammar school in Turnov. Not joining any youth organisation, he was a radio enthusiast, he loved nature, sport and music. During the Soviet invasion of August 1968 he had been involved in anti-occupation broadcast by Trutnov’s local radio. In the 1970s he started a rock group, ‘The Academia’, with his friends, and he kept playing music even during his compulsory military service, when he was playing, quite absurdly, even songs by Bohdan Mikolášek, who had been already silenced by the government. In 1977, he graduated from the Brno University of Technology and started to work as a technician at a computer lab at the Faculty of Textile Engineering TU Liberec. In November 1989, he was one of the leaders of the local Civic Forum branch. Thanks to his work assignment he was able to print various manifestos and leaflets. He witnessed various opportunists joining the Civic forum. His motto is: one should remain open to new opportunities and never lose interest in the world around.
