"When I was two years old, my parents moved to Subcarpathian Rus, because of work, and so that's where I went to primary school and also got through three years of grammar school. Till 1939. Then Hitler came and we had to run - through Romania, Jugoslavia and Austria all the way home. That was the Little Entente at that time. So we were greeted heartily in Romania and Jugoslavia, as fugitives. People were waiting for us at train stations with food, they cheered us and promised to not leave us in the lurch, so to say. The welcome in Austria was much colder. In fact, they gave us these little swastika banners to wave, and we kept throwing them under the wheels of the train, so they threatened to shoot us. We didn't know at the time, what nazism and hitlerism meant. And when we got home, to Brno, it was very grim and painful. We didn't have anywhere to go to, pretty much, and it was very hard, starting anew."
"And that's where we met our Communist collegues, after the coup of February 1948. I remember one of them very well. He was this spindly classmate, Dejdar was his name. He always waved his little fists in front of our faces, shouting at us, saying that he'd like to see us all before the firing squad, us believers. And that if they can't persuade us the easy way, then, he shook his fist: 'Then we'll persuade you like this, with our fists.' So I told him: 'Look, you can't force truth with your fists. Either you're right, then I'll accept it, or you're wrong, and your fists won't move me.'
"Well then, the greatest moment of those times, for me, was the Saint Vitus - Corpus Christi celebration of 1949. I think ti was the 18th or 19th of June. I was there when archibishop Beran spoke out at Strahov on saturday. And the following day at Saint Vitus'. The speeches were very impressive. The archbishop was a small man, there was even a joke about him, that when he was ordained as bishop, there were three very tall bishops there, and when the ordainment was complete, one of them told him: 'You can stand up now, Your Excellence.' And he said: 'I'm already standing.' That's how small he was. That was just a sidenote. His speech really had soul, it was full of pain, but also of resolve and courage. The day after that saturday was Corpus Christi at Saint Vitus'. I managed to get there because I lived close by. And a lot of people didn't get in, because the StB a the militia surrounded Prague Castle and only let their own people in. So when was inside, somewhere in the middle of the cathedral, I looked behind me and there was this row of tough guys, really Communist-looking faces, who all had a blue pin in their left coat pocket. That's when I realised what was going on. And I was right, because when the archbishop began speaking, saying: 'They gave you a newspaper at the entrance. They call it Catholic News. But I tell you, that is not Catholic news.' At that moment, this huge roar resonated through the whole cathedral, the mob started shouting, and quite simply the archbishop's voice was drowned in the din. I remember he said: 'Please, watch out for our little ones, our children (I think he said Catholilc children), so that nothing happens to them in the chaos.' That also applied, morally, to the following years. Because the children suffered a lot... We accompanied him to the archbishop's palace. There we cheered him. And then... on one side the Communists were singing the Internationale, on the other we were singing the Papal hymn. Some people got arrested apparently, I didn't see that though. And that's the end of this part."
(I wanted to ask you, when you were talking about your time in the army, about the AEC's, where were you located and what was it like? What did you do there? And whether they behaved worse to you, as priests and monks, than to the others?) "I can't say they were especially tough. It was like ordinary army service. They say: 'The Army is no nanny.' So there was some nasty stuff going on, even against priests. For instance when we were at Sliač in Slovakia, they stationed one unit somewhere, I don't know where exactly, and we ended under the supervision of some Fábri chap. He was a teacher, formerly from some order, Society fo the Divine Word maybe, or some congregation. Either way he knew how about us, he knew where it would hurt us most. When he found a breviary or a Bible, he would tear out pages and leave them at the toilet. He would throw hosts to the dogs. And so on. Basically, he behaved very badly. Also, he called emergencies during the night, one night it was about sixteen emergency alarms. And in the morning we had to go to work as usual. If they found someone sleeping at work, they fined him five hundred crows. That was a lot of money in those days. It got so bad, that one of us Dominicans, father Anselm, escaped and went to the airport and asked the local - I think it was - colonel, to intervene. That's what happened in the end. We saw father Anselm as a real hero then. He ended up in Germany... Other times, our captain, whichever he was, would come to us. Barely standing, drunk through and through. And he would shout at us, that we priests mustn't drink alcohol."
"And when they imprisoned Luděk a second time, his wife came to me to Jáchymov, asking for advice: 'Luděk's on hunger-strike and it looks like he might die. What should I do?' So I wrote her a note to give to Luděk. He writes about it in one of his books. She put the note in among a pack of envelopes, which she always gave him in prison so he could write home. And Luděk puts it like this: 'I don't know why, but I pulled out an envelope from the middle of the pack. And when I wanted to put my letter into it, I felt some sort of resistance. I look - there's a note there. So I take it out and on it there's written: If He Who Is Holiest demands the sacrifice of life, we should not withold it from him. But if he does not demand it, we must not force it to him.' Luděk later said: 'I understood, ended the hunger-strike, got out of jail.' And he got out of here aswell, into Germany. They let him go. Those are the small things that show, in my opinion, a certain Divine guidance."
Jordán Jaromír Vinklárek was born on the 25th of January 1925 in Všechovice, Moravia. He spent his childhood in Subcarpathian Rus, were his family moved to find work. In 1939 they had to flee from there, in quite an adventurous passage through Romania, Jugoslavia and Austria back to Czechoslovakia. To help his family, Vinklárek worked at Baťa’s boot factory in Zlín. After the war he continued his studies at Charles University, the Faculty of Arts, studying English and Czech. He was witness to archbishop Beran’s speech during the celebration of Corpus Christi in 1949 and of provocations by the StB (State Secret Service), after which he resolved to become a priest. He joined the Dominican Order. In April 1950, when the Communists broke up all religious orders, Vinklárek was interned in Broumov with his fellow brothers. From thence he was sent to serve in the army - in the Auxiliary Engineering Corps, a heavy labour battalion for anti-Communists. He served there till 1953. The next seven years were spent on construction sites and amongst medical documentation. In 1960 he entered the seminar in Litoměřice. Hewas ordained in 1964. Father Vinklárek functioned in Vyšehrad, Jáchymov, Chlum over Ohří and, for twelve years, in Stoda at Pilsen. He maintained secret contact with his fellow brethren the whole period. He retired in Brno, but was moved two years later to Olomouc, to teach at the Theological Faculty. At the present time he lives in the Dominican monastery in Prague. Jordán Jaromír Vinklárek died on 30 March 2020.
