"I did not stop being a Sokol even during the war, which was not easy. We had this sort of afterschool club at school, and when we wanted to be in the gym, then one of the professors had to be there with us. We negotiated that with the gym teachers. They came once, they came twice, and then stopped. They said: 'It smells too much of doing Sokol.' And doing Sokol during the war was a reason for being sent to a concentration camp."
"During the time of the Prague Uprising I went out into the streets, without anything, without a weapon, but I told myself: 'I will be needed somewhere.' I ended up at the putting down of the fire at the Old City Hall and until this day I remember the ledge at Štorch publishing house, where I stood, and that house burned down from the cellar to the attic. And back then I told myself: 'And so this is what hell looks like.' In the evening we were already quite tired from putting out fires, and so they drove us to Sokolská street, to the central fire station, everyone got a blanket, curled up somewhere, slept, and in the morning at seven o'clock, or around then, they were already driving us to Pankrác, where there was still fighting going on."
Jiří Soukup was born on the 30th of June 1927 in Prague. As a child he helped his relatives with farming. Before the war his mother registered him in Sokol, and he remained loyal to sport and exercise his entire life. During the Second World War he joined a resistance group under the leadership of Evžen Chroust. During the Prague Uprising he helped with putting down the fire in the Old City Hall. During the February year of 1948 he took part in a student march supporting the president Beneš, due to which he later faced problems with the screening commission. He studied at the College of Agriculture and started working in the Ministry of Agriculture, he joined the communist party. He dedicated himself to sport until an elderly age, another one of his hobbies was painting. In the year 2020 he became the oldest citizen of the Czech Republic who has run a marathon. He died on May 20, 2021.
