"I was in the middle of my studies and I almost had to stop. It's a wonder that the rector was able to muster such courage, that when the national committee sent him a letter in 1951, telling him to expel me immediately, as I was the son of a 'kulak' - they called Dad a kulak, because he didn't want to join the co-op. The rector replied (they found the document in 1990) that the rector's office of the university does not fall under the jurisdiction of the national committees. Just imagine, he dared write that in those times. Now that is bravery. And he didn't tell anyone, I didn't know a thing, I was surprised that I was able to pass my final exams. That is his merit, that he took it upon himself in such a way."
"When I saw the horrors there, the screaming, I didn't have a clue that they were not allowed to beat people, that it had been banned in 1955. I thought that those people were being beaten up, to be screaming like that day and night. And that was all the time. I'm almost surprised I didn't end up in a madhouse after that week, because I wasn't prepared for such settings, and I didn't expect that they would be treating people in such a way." (Q: "What helped you to survive?") "I prayed a lot. I couldn't have made it through otherwise, I can say that quite honestly. If I hadn't prayed, I certainly wouldn't be here, now. I prayed one rosary after the other for days on end, even afterwards when I was in solitary confinement and in custody, always alone, alone."
"They didn't explain anything, they just convicted me. They left me in Ruzyně. I was in the cellar, it was awful. No sun, they took out for walks during the night only. I could just see upwards, it was a concrete bunker with a guard on patrol with his submachine gun. And I was only allowed out ocassionally, not all the time. The windows were with wired glass, so I couldn't see the sun. And always alone... My weight dropped down very quickly. The guard was wearing a fur coat and I was in my pyjamas with no socks. All I could do was to wrap my feet in toilet paper to keep the cold out. A concrete floor - that was my bed... It's like they designed it to give one pneumonia. And then they could write: 'Caught pneumonia, died.' Finito. And that they did give me it... that's how they got rid of people."
"Careful about that! You have to be careful when condemning someone. It is hard to pass judgement. If someone acts rationally according to the notions that have been hammered into him for forty years, if a person is brought up in a certain way, it is hard for them to change their opinion after so many years. For that reason we can hardly blame the communists for not being able to admit nowadays that they had acted differently. They would send their whole life into ruins by that. In their old age they would have to admit they followed a false path. Only a deeply religious person can do that - admit their sins. That means I can't condemn everyone straight away, but I have to understand what I am working against, what I am actually fighting, what I am condemning, who I am condemning. And here is where I have to be careful, because that is not easy to discern. It all has roots of some sort, it all has some sort of context."
"The Salesian associates sent me straight away to Moravia to our old provincial, 'old' father Don Stuchlý, to ask what we should do, that there are all these police here, that they took all the Salesians away from us. They didn't imprison him as he was ill, but they put him under the supervision of the nurses in Luknov in Moravia, near Zlín. He was already in hospital when they took everyone away, so he didn't know that they had rounded up all the brethren. I mustered a bit of courage and told him what had happened, that they had taken away the Salesians, that we don't know what to do, that we're just the boys there alone, and that the agents are stealing everything. The old man paused - and this is interesting - he pulled open a drawer and gave us biscuits. That gave him time to sort things out in his head, I guess, what was going on. But he said: 'I can't fix anything anymore, but find some way to get to Don Trochta, the bishop of Litoměřice, although he's under surveillance, and tell him that I am putting him in charge of the entire Salesian mission from now on."
" 'State Security want to speak with you at the train station here in Pardubice.' I come there and I see these two chaps: one was a primitive old geezer, but the other fellow was a clever and cunning type. All of a sudden they let loose, not why I had been in prison, but: 'So you won't forgive us?!' How come they said 'you won't forgive us', when I had never seen them before in my entire life? In other words you can see how self-confident they were, how they thought that they decided about everything. And now they say: 'I had to, I had to, my superiors did it...' They blame everything on someone else, saying they had to. They didn't have to!"
"The first week I tried to find out why I was being held. That was such a terrible week. The prisoners were screaming, being dragged to interrogation night and day. You could hear how they grabbed them and pulled them away, how they didn't want to go. Like they were being dragged through the corridors. It was enough to make one crazy, the sounds, what went on there. When I had endured that for six days or so, I thought to myself: 'Should I have my teeth knocked out, or should I end up in a madhouse?' I was interrogated by the chief's lieutenant himself. How he tricked me! He took a big piece of paper and wrote a capital K, capital D and capital S, and asked me to read it out loud, like I would the alphabet. Somehow I couldn't guess at what he meant to achieve by that, so I said quite openly: 'kay dee es' [the initials of the Christian Democratic Party, KDS - ed.]. As soon as I said 'kay dee es', he jumped up and started shouting at me, claiming I was in league with Adenauer through an illegal party. That had me staring eyes wide - what had I to do with some Adenauer chap? That's how it began, what followed was two months of interrogations day and night. They didn't beat me, but they harassed me physically: in the cellar, once even downstairs in the wash room or the showers, just a wooden mat on the floor for me to sleep on. They laughed at me, saying that they had enough time, that it will all die with me, that no one will know about it. And some seventy pages, there was a lot of it: 'Here...' And they didn't say 'read!' anymore, but 'sign!'. I signed it all. That was on May 31st, I still remember it like it was today. That was a wonderful day for me, that the interrogations were finally over."
"I told [our provincial superior] Dominus in 1967, when I saw that Jarda had been ordained by Don Trochta: 'Dominus, you know I could be ordained as well. I would like to be.' Well, he was waiting for when someone would speak up. There was a bishop Schaffran in Görlitz. That's where we were ordained. We were made deacons on Friday, accompanied him in the rest home throughout Saturday, and then on Sunday morning he made us priests. He said: 'The shortest time I can ordain a priest from a deacon is three days.' So he did it all in one go. That was nice. And then I could hardly speak with anyone for the next two years, to tell them I'm a priest and that I'd studied for it. Not even during Dubček, Dominus said. It's his great merit, thanks pretty much to him alone could our older and middle generation study to become priests. Thanks to him taking the responsibility and the risks. He arranged for the secret studies, we can thank him only."
If I were to be born once more, I would pray to the Lord that it should be during Communism again.
Photograph from investigative documents of the secret police
photo: Archiv bezpečnostních složek, a. č. V-1196-HK, spis V. Teplého
photo: Archiv bezpečnostních složek, a. č. V-1196-HK, spis V. Teplého
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Father Václav Teplý SDB was born in 1928 into a farmer’s family in Horní Roveň in the district of Pardubice. During his studies at the University of Constructional Engineering in Prague he lived in the Salesian boardinghouse in Prague-Kobylisy, where he was caught up in “Project K”. His Salesian associates sent him to F. Ignác Stuchlý SDB to ask what to do after the Salesians’ imprisonment. He was to be expelled from school due to his farmer-owner origin, but he was protected from that fate by the school’s rector. After completing his studies in 1952 he was drafted into compulsory military service. His uncle Václav Čermák directed the formation of the local organisation of the Christian Democratic Party, and he had Teplý take part in its activities. Václav Teplý had actually stolen two kilos of explosives during his stay with the military. However, State Security discovered the group and so in 1955 he was arrested together with others and sentenced to 12 years for high treason and larceny of state property. He spent a year of prison in solitary confinement. The cold, dark cell caused him to catch tuberculosis, which proved almost fatal. He was amnestied in 1960. He contacted the Salesians soon after. He studied theology in secret, and in 1968 he was ordained a priest in the GDR. He then spent several years as a “building technician” with other Salesians at the parish house in Trmice, where they began organising youth activities. However, the State soon dissolved the Salesian community in Trmice, and Teplý was forced to move to Šluknov. There he was granted state approval and became a parish priest. In late 1989 he became one of the organisers of the revolution in the Šluknov district. He was partially rehabilitated in 1994. Following a car accident n 1996 he was not able to continue his work in the parish, and so he moved to the Salesian community in Prague-Kobylisy. Václav Teplý died in 2016.
