“My dad was imprisoned without a reason in 1951 or 1950, as it was done in those times. A kind of an anti-state group was formed based on the fact that at that time he worked for a business that dealt with catching of animals. It was a state-owned company for export of animals. And something happened there and daddy was included among those who were accused. Our family was not told anything at all, dad simply did not come back home from work. My mom had serious heart problems and she was a housewife and she could not work, and obviously when her husband – my dad – had not come home, she tried to find out what had happened. They denied that they had arrested him, and we did not learn anything else. In the place where he worked she was told that they did not know where he was. For half a year our whole family – we, little children, I and my sister Jiřina – were thus living with the notion that my mom was trying to find out what had happened with the father. She had no means to earn a living, because she was a housewife, and she did not work and she had two little children to take care of. Then one acquaintance of my father, a lawyer, somehow – it was dangerous in the 1950s – found out that dad had been arrested and that some court trial was being prepared with the whole group. He was imprisoned in Prague-Řepy and my mom gradually managed to get them to confirm this information for her. We were able to visit father in prison once every two months.”
“I remember that when we found out that he was in Řepy, where the convent now is; they were imprisoned in that convent. We were able to visit him there once every two months. It was always a horrible sight for us, because we were let into a room where three cops with red epaulettes were sitting, and they were in charge of the prisoners. Any my father in a striped uniform was in a cage in the middle of the room. It was a kind of a large wire cage, reaching almost to the ceiling. He was simply being kept inside the cage as we were talking with him. We were not allowed to give him anything nor go too close too him. My mom tried hard and my dad who since the times of the First Republic – obviously, I did not remember it – was terribly afraid of communists, and he especially regarded Stalin as a villain, which eventually turned out to be true. He was convinced that just like all the others who had been already eliminated, the group around him, the so-called traitors… my father too was convinced that he would never get out anymore. He always cried when we were leaving, saying the he would see us no more.”
“On 5th May the shooting started in Prague. The men from Lahovice therefore built a barricade on the bridge over the Berounka River and they did it for two reasons: one was to prevent the Germans from escaping from Prague to the West. But actually, what mattered was a different thing: the Germans had called in some tank divisions from the West to come and put down the Prague Uprising, and they were stopped by the barricade where people with several rifles tried to prevent the Germans from reaching Prague. What is unbelievable about it is that when they then .. blasted the barricade to pieces, they also destroyed by shooting the flat in which we lived, and the commander of the SS group then had all men in Lahovice executed at night on 8th May. Not many people speak about it, and so I am speaking about it.”
Jiří Tichota was born on April 18, 1937 and he comes from a musical family. One of his ancestors, his great-great-grandfather Antonín Liehmann, was Antonín Dvořák’s music teacher. Jiří’s father Ing. Dr. Jiří Tichota was arrested in the 1950s, imprisoned without a trial and forced to collaborate with the StB. In 1961 he committed suicide. Jiří Tichota was not allowed to study and he had to work as a worker in the Spolana Neratovice chemical factory. Later he studied at the University of Chemistry and Technology (VŠCHT) in Prague. He was interested in playing the guitar and cither, and he participated in establishing the music band Spirituál Kvintet. Jiří graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in 1965 and he earned his PhDr. degree in 1968. He is known as the art manager of the band Spirituál Kvintet and as the author of many of their lyrics. His wife is Zdenka Tichotová, née Tosková, and they have son Tomáš and daughter Lenka. At present he lives in Prague 4 and in Točná.
