Mgr. Róbert Vasiliak

* 1949

  • "And then this brother of his, he has four children, two sons, that is, my cousins, and two daughters, who are cousins. So basically, as I would say, I am the last living Mohican here, in Slovakia, I already have that direct family only in the United States, which I have never seen in my life and we are not even in contact. I remember once how, it was such a relationship that father, a package arrived and it said that my brother would at least like to know and hear your voice, and that he is planning to transfer by phone, the transfer will be conducted through Canada and it will cost 900 dollars... and dad immediately wrote that he doesn't know English, so he better send the 900 dollars. That's how relationships were. They never saw each other in their lives, nor they didn't hear from each other, nothing, nothing. Well, we know how it was, how it was after nationalization, how the Nord-Vest was created, and so on, so basically the contact was, after all, grandma also sent dollars, which you never received, you only received a voucher for vouchers, then there were various tuzexes where you could shop with the vouchers and so on and so forth..."

  • "Well, in the end I left when I was fired from that Žilina, I was at home for a while, and since I didn't want to start the two-year basic attendance service, I found that the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Košice needed to add, without admission interviews, those it was apparently uninteresting to the general public, this study, so I wanted to apply there, but I didn't have any, they didn't give me one from that one when I was fired, they didn't give me any certificates, nor any of my important ones, nor my graduation certificates, nor all of this they didn't. I didn't even think about it, nor did I pay any attention to it at the time, I don't need them yet. Well, I wanted to go to the engineering school, only there I had to have the certain documents that I had to have for the study department to present myself. So I traveled back to Žilina, I'm going to the study department to ask for my documentation, you're withholding all of it from me, I need you to give it to me. After that they discussed everything, they told me, yes, tell me which university you apply to the school and we will send it all there. I say, no, I didn't come for you to tell me this, I need you to give it to me, because I'm still deciding exactly between four or five schools and I won't send it there every time, then from there, send it there, and all this, I I need to have that. So they told me to wait in the corridor, they consulted, I don't know with whom, what, how. In the end, they gave me the documents, but it was a thick one envelope sealed and with a seal, Transport University, a big red seal, there were the ropes, all that secret material, that I should give it to the study department of the school where I want to apply. OK fine. So I took it, went out, closed the door, immediately tore it up in front of their door, took what suited me and threw the rest at them provocatively. But there was in between, we called it the newspaper, where I was banned from being admitted to universities."

  • "Only then did someone come, they also came from Prague, from the headquarters, but in the meantime I didn't know that they had already been finding out everything, everything, everything, everything about me since I was young, even from my friend in Bardejov, who was like, as I would say, the ruler of Bardejov, Bardejov spas, Dušan Karačínský, then tells me that this and that were and they found out from me, we were in the bar of Bardejov spas, that's how he told me. So they know everything about me, apparently they already had a great interest and needed, about me, I don't know how they picked me from that faculty and all that, they picked me or sought me out. Only then did this happen that they wanted to make me a Czechoslovak spy. (And that's what they told you directly?) Yes that I would work outside, abroad, that I would be here, that they would give me - well, that's what I would do, but here we were laughing, that they would give me a million in my account, I will receive ten thousand a month in my account as a monthly salary hey, I'll get a hundred thousand deutsche marks there and to go there as if to live, almost to live. Come on, at first I thought it was funny, then I thought about it, but the amount of money they were giving me, that's 12 houses right away, this and that everything for a while, so I don't know."

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    Králiky, 30.09.2021

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Sports life in socialist Czechoslovakia

Róbert Vasiliak as a high school student
Róbert Vasiliak as a high school student
photo: Witnesses archive

Róbert Vasiliak, born in 1949 at a gamekeeper’s lodge in Porub, lived a beautiful childhood in the Bojnice forests and a stormy youth in Zborov in eastern Slovakia, at a high school in Bardejov and at universities in Žilina, Košice and Bratislava. Since childhood, he has been involved in sports, especially skiing, football, basketball and bodybuilding, which led him to study at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports of the UK. After graduating, he became a long-term coach of the Czechoslovak national team in cross-country skiing, which was associated with frequent trips abroad, thanks to which he came to the attention of the security forces, who tried to recruit him into their ranks as a foreign spy.