Ing. Jan Tůma

* 1930

Journalist, Witnesses of local events connected to WWII, Svědci lokálních událostí z éry komunismu, Scientist, Examinee of the State Secret Police – enemy person
8. 5. 1945 - End of WWII, 30. 5. 1945 – 29. 10. 1946 - Withdrawal of Germans from Czechoslovakia
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    Interrogations due to the Vaclav Havel letter, 1975

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    "I was invited to Bartolomějská Street for several hours and they wanted to know who gave me the letter. I tried to talk my way out of it and lie, so I said I took the tram and a colleague from the faculty came with me and gave me the letter to read. I thought it was interesting, so I read it and talked to several people about it. They wanted to know which colleague it was. I hadn't been kicked out of school yet. But two days later they invited me back to Bartholomew's. There were hundreds of colleagues at that pedagogical school, two thirds of them women. They had their photographs and wanted me to stop lying and point to the one who was there. I said I just didn't know. So by doing that I showed that I didn't want to accept any cooperation."

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    First scientific lecture, first half of the 1950s

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    "By that time, I had caught on to the real science. It was a time when the first atomic bomb had already exploded and the first atomic reactor was being prepared. I managed to get a book translated from English. It was a basic book on what atomic energy was and how it manifested itself. That it was like a bomb, but also the future of electricity generation. I read it thoroughly, and when I imagined it all, I thought I was capable of giving a lecture on it. And so there were big posters around Prague saying 'Jan Tůma at the Technical Museum - Atomic Energy.' In the front row sat my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother... I made it through the two-hour lecture, and the discussion, and that started the foundation of my completely different growth. I liked the lecture so much that the Technical Museum started booking me. I got an honorarium and felt big and important. I tried to find more details about atomic energy. It wasn't my field, I tended to be more into trains, but it wasn't hard to study and lecture about it."

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    The End of the War: Escape from the SS from Nusle to Smichov

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    duration: 01:19
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    "My mother and I had to flee across half of Prague to Smichov, because there was a threat that Nusle would be occupied by the German army, in the worst sense of the word - by the SS. The escape was a mass escape, and you can imagine that we children couldn't carry anything, so Mummy dragged two suitcases and we children each carried a smaller suitcase. We ran from house to house, because in order to get through the Nusle valley towards the Vltava River, where my mother had decided to go, we had to run under the railway from the Vinohrady tunnel. But there was an armoured train on it, which was firing at the German planes, which in turn were trying to hit the train. So we ran out of the far house by the park by the Tyl Theater with our suitcases and suddenly shrapnel exploded in the air and we raced right back again." - "Where in Smíchov did you run to?"-"There were certain collection points marked out and we spent the night there in an emergency on military beds. In the morning we ran out and were already welcoming the Russian army."

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    Praha, 15.12.2022

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    duration: 02:42:55
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I was fired from my job because of Havel’s letter, so I wrote a book that the White House had

witness Jan Tůma
witness Jan Tůma
photo: pamětník
photo: pamětník
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Ing. Jan Tůma was born on 20 July 1930 in Prague Nusle into the family of Jan and Anna Tůma. Jan grew up with his younger brother Pavel. His father had a camera shop on Wenceslas Square. Anna’s mother came from the Prošek family, who owned a tenement house in Prague, where Jan’s grandfather František Prošek had a general store. In 1936, Jan’s father died after an appendectomy, and his mother raised the children alone and never remarried. Jan Tůma recalls dramatic moments from the end of the war, especially the escape from the German army retreating to Nusle, or the revenge on German civilians. After the war, part of his family was displaced to West Germany because his father came from the South Bohemian border region, where his sisters had married local Germans before the war. Jan Tůma had an interest in technology since childhood. He studied at the Czech Technical University in 1948-1953, worked on bridge construction during his studies, also lectured at the Technical Museum and had already made his first publications. After school, he joined Konstruktiva, but soon accepted an offer from the Railway University in Karlín to work as an assistant professor. He made educational films there and continued to do so after he moved to the University of Economics in Prague, where he taught industrial technology as an assistant professor until 1960 and collaborated in the introduction of the first mainframe computer. He switched to the emerging field of cybernetics and together with his colleague Zdeněk Křečan built the first “teaching machine” KT-1 and equipped it with programs. He then continued the development of “cybernetic pedagogy” at the Faculty of Education of Charles University. From 1968 to 1972 he stayed in West Berlin, where teaching machines were being introduced at universities. Because of his contact with emigrants and suspected intention to emigrate, he was registered as a “person under investigation”. In 1975 he was dismissed from the faculty along with four other teachers for allegedly distributing and reproducing an open letter from Václav Havel to Gustav Husák. After that, he was unable to find a job until, thanks to an acquaintance, he was entrusted with the Příbram Ore Mines Company School in the Loděnice Chateau, where he served as headmaster. In 1990, already a pensioner, he was able to start to devote himself fully to travel and journalism. During his lifetime, he published in many technical and professional journals and appeared on Czechoslovak Television and Czechoslovak Radio. He is the author of 62 scientific, technical and popularization books, ten of which were published abroad. His “The Great Pictorial Atlas of World Transportation,” published in 1980 and translated into several languages, received the greatest international publicity. He has two children, is married for the second time, and his second wife, Eva Tůmová, also told her life story for Memory of the Nation.

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