Jindřich Valenta

* 1935

  • "In the 1960s, most of us were invited back to Bartolomějská. Probably to make us aware of the situation. They didn't put black glasses over our eyes anymore, but they took us to the same places we remembered. Eventually we were taken to a cell where an uncle, a State Security officer, was sitting again and said: 'Don't continue with this scouting!' And then they let us go again. They reminded us of what happened to us in that fifty-fourth year."

  • "From the shaft we went through a gate to the camp, where we were so called pocketed to see if we were carrying anything we were not allowed to have on us. We packed two buckets of coal per day for the cell. In the winter, when the snow fell through the holes in the barracks into our beds, it couldn't be enough. So we brought wood secretly from the shaft. We did it by shoving the cut pieces into the sleeves of our torches. There was plenty of it for corridor supports and such. The decent guards would let us in with it. The ones who weren't decent made us dump the load to their room and made fire with it themselves. In this situation, I said to one of them, whose name was Korejec, that I would have him painted on my cupboard so that my children wouldn't come for sugar. It turned into three days in correction."

  • "Apparently there were guards who joined before the Forty-eighth because of the supervision of criminal elements. They probably didn't take us political prisoners as seriously as other convicts. Smoking was allowed in the cells, and prisoners could buy tobacco called Taras Bulba and papers. Of course, the older guys didn't know how to roll it, so I, a non-smoker, rolled cigarettes for them. But one day they ran out of matches. When the guard came with food, they asked him if he would give them some. Instead, he yelled swear words at them and left. After an hour or two, the door suddenly opened quietly, someone threw a box of matches inside and closed it again. That means one of them must have been sympathetic. But since they were afraid of each other, they must have done it secretly. It was almost a heroic act, because if he had been caught he would have been in big trouble."

  • "You came to the gatehouse and they put dark glasses on your eyes. Next they led you by the elbow like a blind man into one of the rooms. During the interrogation itself, they took off your glasses. After a while, I wanted to pee. So I had to put my glasses back on and the warden took me to the toilet where I could take them off my eyes again. I peed in the shell, and he stood next to me and watched. I guess so I wouldn´t' want to throw something in the urinal. After they questioned me, they took me to another room where I had to undress and hand over everything I had on me. Instead, I was given a prison uniform."

  • "I was without scouting for a while. I started going to dance classes. Even though Scouting was banned, I still wore the Scout Lily on my lapel. At that time it was customary for people to join the organizations they belonged to - whether they were political parties or (interest - ed.) organizations. The Scouts had a lily. I danced with a girl called Alena Šímová. She says, 'Are you a scout?' I say, 'Well.' We got together and she dragged me into the illegal troop. What could we do in the underground at our age? We were distributing some leaflets that were against the regime. Then we did, nowadays you could call it crap, but back then it was considered that we were fighting against something. For example, we deflated the tires of the CSAD buses. That was our so-called sabotage."

  • "When they put us in jail, the older prisoners laughed at us for being taken off the rocking horse. Because as soon as we turned eighteen, they arrested us. There were about fifteen people in our group and we did about 160 years in total."

  • “An interesting meeting was with the son of the First Republic-minister Bechyně. He had fought on the Western Front, and in prison he met up with an SS man he had fought against in the Sahara. They slept in the same bunk bed, one below the other.”

  • “They called me to the leader, that would have been comrade leader. And they sent my leader for his coat... The interesting thing is, although I’m not superstitious, they got that right, they chose well. It was on Friday the 13th.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, klubovna střediska Ostříž, 03.04.2011

    (audio)
    duration: 49:18
    media recorded in project A Century of Boy Scouts
  • 2

    byt pana Valenty, 20.05.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 31:34
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 3

    Praha, 11.08.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:50:53
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 4

    Praha, 27.08.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:21:42
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

The older prisoners laughed at me that I was taken right off the rocking horse

Period photograph of Jindřich Valenta in scout costume, 1953
Period photograph of Jindřich Valenta in scout costume, 1953
photo: archive of a witness

Jindřich Valenta was born on January 7, 1935 in Prague, Bohdalec. Soon afterwards, the family moved to Žižkov, where they lived through the Second World War. Jindřich, who was ten years old at the end of the war, joined the re-established 36th Scout Troop in September 1945, where he acquired the nickname Vlk. A few years after the official inclusion of all youth organizations under the Czechoslovak Youth Union and the demise of Junák, he joined the illegal 34th Ostříž Centre organized by Oldřich Rottenborn. At that time, a group of scouts printed and distributed anti-state leaflets or organized small sabotage actions. After one of them, some of the members were arrested and sentenced to minor prison terms in the Jáchymov camps. Jindřich received a suspended sentence at that time and together with other scouts formed the so-called Štáb sedmi (Staff of Seven). This was a group that continued its anti-state activities from 1952 to 1954. In the middle of this period, Jindřich was recruited by State Security for cooperation. He informed the other members of the troop of this fact right after the first meeting and together they tried to give them false information about their activities. The group was in possession of firearms at the time, which also became the main motive for the trial begun after the re-arrest in October 1954. In it, Jindřich received a seven-year sentence and served three years of it in the Rovnost camp in Jáchymov. He spent the next two years in Opava prison, where he joined the failed revolt. He was released in 1960 from Valdice prison, where he spent his sixth and final year behind bars. Shortly afterwards he was called up for military service with the so-called Technical Battalions. He subsequently worked as a mechanic of washing machines and centrifuges for most of his active life. After 1989, he became deputy head of the 34th Ostříž Scout Centre, which no longer had to operate underground.