“I came up with the idea that we could write some slogan on the long fence at the factory. The fence was fifty-three meters long if I remember correctly. And to write it in Russian: '‚Rabočij klass protiv okkupacii našej rodiny‘. I came up with that and František Štětička, a skilled painter, painted it meticulously in white on this piece of cloth which we wired to the fence. And during the meeting with Soviet officers there was this colonel, he had this striking name, Pushkin, probably it wasn't his real name, I don't know, so colonel Pushkin was looking for arguments to support the thesis that the counterrevolution had been organized by the Western powers. And he said: 'On one of the factories there is lozung gramotnym russkim jazykom napisannyj.“ That there were no spelling mistakes and so it was evident that the Western imperialists had to send that to us as we were not clever enough to write it properly. And there were no spelling mistakes indeed. There were two S' in klass, two k's in okkupacii, and the people who were writing all the slogans on the fences with lime didn't know that and they were making mistakes. And we made no mistakes. Of course the slogan had to be removed after 1969 and it had become the subject of negotiation about why and who and what.”
“On August 20th I just had this new issue prepared that I wanted to take to the printing works in the morning. But as I turned on the radio I realized that we were no longer a free and independent republic, that we have been given international assistance. Through an inquiry I found out that the printing works was occupied by the Red army, so I probably wouldn't even get inside. But I was the director of the advertising departments in the company which had quite decent equipment. We had a Romayor printing machine we could use, technology for reproduction and everything which was needed. Cameras, a professional photographer and people who could write and draw. So we put the whole capacity of the department, there were eight of us, to the services of the resistance against the occupation, against this unnatural state of things that emerged. In full accordance with all my fellow workers.”
“On May 8th in the afternoon it was still full of Germans, they were repairing a tank in the barn next door. And all of a sudden, below the Hradisko hill, at Padělky, those little figures began to emerge. Bang, bang, there was shooting. Like during the Republic, in the times of peace, when hunters went across that field hunting partridges. Pop, pop, pop. Someone said that the shots were getting nearer so we hid in a shelter. Neighbours helped each other as we didn't have a cellar but next to us, at the Návrátils, there was this quite big one. So they adapted the cellar together so we even had our straw mattress there. There we would lie down. And the shooting started, mainly mortar fire. Small units of Russians advanced in quite a resolute manner so we heard machinegun fire and bigger explosions, those were the mortars as later we found these propellant charges lying around. Suddenly there was silence. Your ears hurt after so many hours of such noise. Suddenly there was such silence you almost felt sick. Someone went there and came back running saying: 'On your feet, there's peace! Long live peace!' So we would run outside and next to the uncle Kolda's tobacco shop there was a Red Army soldier. Young man, a garrison cap with a red star, submachine gun on his chest. He was smiling. If someone would ask me what was the most intense moment in my life, I would say it was this moment. To see this after all that horror, as we didn't know where we would survive or how it would all end, if the Germans wouldn't come back, it they wouldn't take revenge on us. This soldier was standing there and people were embracing him. 'For six years we have been waiting for you!' And someone asked him if the Germans could come back. And I remember him saying: 'You can sleep in peace.'”
Milan Tichák was born on August 20th 1933 in Paskov but spent his childhood in Velký Týnec. As a curious boy he witnessed series of events during the Wold War II. In 1946 his family moved to Olomouc where he had a good time as a member of the local Scout troop of the reestablished Junák organization. He grew fond of the city of Olomouc and he took interest in history. After graduating from a secondary school he began to study at an aviation school in Prostějov which was closed down after a year and Milan had to do his compulsory military service. After leaving the army he wanted to study history at a university but had not been admitted due to an administrative error. He started to work at Sigma Olomouc enterprise where he had risen up to become an advertising department director. Since 1963 he participated in distance learning, studying history and Czech at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University of Olomouc receiving a doctorate in 1969. During the so-called Prague Spring he had been voted a deputy chairman of the company’s Communist party committee by the Sigma Olomouc employees and as an editor of the company’s magazine, The Reporter (Zpravodaj), he was advocating the Party’s reforms. After the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968 he participated in the resistance against the occupation forces, publishing the Reporter, printing leaflets and writing slogans. In 1969 he had been expelled from the Communist party and had to leave his post at work. In the end, he didn’t have to leave the company but had to take a job in the technical services department. His family had been persecuted during the so-called normalization, his children were not allowed to attend secondary school and his wife couldn’t work as a librarian. In November 1989 Milan participated in the Velvet Revolution and was elected to the local Civic Forum (Občanské fórum) committee in Sigma Olomouc. He left the company in 1990 and started to work as an editor at Hanácké Newspaper (Hanácké noviny), he also wrote several books on the history of the Olomouc region.
Milan Tichák on the right, his father, Ferdinand, in the middle, his brother on the left, dressed in Sokol organisation uniforms during the second unveiling of the Liberation Memorial in Hradisko near Velký Týnec
Milan Tichák on the right, his father, Ferdinand, in the middle, his brother on the left, dressed in Sokol organisation uniforms during the second unveiling of the Liberation Memorial in Hradisko near Velký Týnec
