Jiří Zachariáš

“Well, of course, they tried to lure us in several ways. The regime after 1970 was completely different from the one that liquidated the scouts in 1948 or 1949. Those unionists and communists in 1970 asked us a fundamental question if we were going to transfer with the club or if we wanted to transfer to the new Pioneer organization: ‘Comrades, no changes come into consideration, you will continue according to your well-established traditions. Don’t worry about anything.’ The regime in the 1970s had only one goal: to declare in front of society that even the Scouts agreed with the creation of a new Pioneer organization to which at least 75-80 per cent of them would transfer. It was an effort aimed primarily at people my age. So people aged around twenty-five to thirty years. Of course, they were not interested in the scouts who had a black mark against their name. That is, for example, scouts like Bobr Zikán and others who in some way–from their point of view–were guilty of the liquidation of that unified children’s and youth organization. But they treated and approached us (the promising young blokes – according to them) completely differently. Persuasion. Offering: ‘Look, you started in Junák, working for that magazine. Would you like to work in Mladá fronta? This children’s magazine [Pioneer Trail] will carry on.’ That was very, very tempting because I really wanted to do it. [I wanted to be] the editor of Junák. I also knew it a little already, didn’t I? And suddenly, he is offering you this position in all seriousness. It was very, very tempting. But I didn’t want to do it for one reason. And that was a matter of a personal principle, personal maturity, because we said, ‘When there is an enemy in the country, a decent person should not pursue a career.’ So we reckoned that sooner or later, we would have to sacrifice our character because of something. And so it was also a springboard to my future life. Yes, so I worked in that editorial office until 1970. And then, I started looking for a new job. Well, and that job was the easiest one for me – washing windows.”

“The first step was, as I say, that we opened an office in Spálená Street, the so-called Information Service for the Restoration of Scouting. Well, someone had to be there, someone had to sign up for managing it. So that’s what we did. We created the so-called board of the initiative group. We signed it. And at the same time, a group of people from 1970 was formed, they were people who knew Vašek Břicháček and Honza Fajfr, and we did not get along very well with them because they were representatives of the downfall of Junák [Czech Scouting organization] in 1970. And we told them: ‘Let’s agree that neither us nor you will enter the highest functions. We will leave it to the council, which we will convene immediately, and there it will emerge that no implicated or somehow defective people will get into those positions.’ Well, and that didn’t happen. They were more persistent than we were, so we said goodbye to them in peace and quiet, and we created the Union of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of the Czech Republic. That’s all. That’s the whole story.”

“The group had around thirty or thirty-five young men who were divided into several troops. The troop system, that is–I would say–generally an exclusive educational system of Scouting throughout the world. The troops work in the form of meetings and separate expeditions. The group is always led by an older mentor. He [the mentor – trans.] has several, say six to eight, younger boys in his troop. And the leader of the group actually divides the leadership of those troops between them [the mentors – trans.]. The troops compete with each other in various disciplines. Apart from the group meetings, which were held once a week, specifically at Jestřáb troop, we also had meetings on Saturdays. Saturday discussions in the clubhouse, which were held in a variety of ways, be it games or competitions, sports activities, singing, or storytelling, followed by the Sunday expedition. Sometimes we would go on a multi-day expedition. The club’s program was divided into spring and summer activities, which was, let’s say, a six-week camp on Zelená říčka in Slovakia below the Kriváň mountain. During the winter, we had one-day trips. Life was concentrated in the clubhouse, having discussions, singing, visiting theatres, visiting museums, and playing in the streets of the Old Town – the traditional spying or running across the city or the traffic light relay race. Usually from Hradčanské Square all the way to Mariánské Square. So the activities were so varied, maybe even too varied. As a rule, the club member–unless there was a significant event, moving, transferring to a different school or a tragedy in the family–usually spent three to four years there. This means that some lasted four years and some five years, but there were also persistent ones who were in the club for ten years. Those were the young men who then helped Foglar in the management of the club. They formed the so-called working circle. They helped not only in the actual management of the club and the creation of the program but also in the provision of various technical matters, such as the transport of the club to the camp, managing supplies at the camp, accounting and so on.”

“It’s true that he didn’t talk about it. Unlike other scout leaders, I’ve come to know after him. They always had a certain opinion about the regime. I would say that, in this regard, he was almost politically indifferent. But I’d say that’s how he’s always been. Then, as an adult, I had the opportunity to get closer to him. He, for example– Even the Kuratorium [Nazi youth organization – ed.] must have been worried about him during the Second World War. Of which [Kuratorium] he was actually part of with his Club of Czech Tourists, which was a cover-up for his Scout group Dvojka. They needed–just like in the 1950s–for him to express himself in some clear way as to whether he was on the side of protectorate politics or not. In that case they would have surely put him in prison, wouldn’t they? But he was a person who was unable to say: ‘This yes, this no.’”

“As boys, we made our own Scout promise just like that, and we thought that the promise was valid, that it was legal–as in done correctly–and that everyone would find it valid. Until Jirka Kafka came and said: ‘I am sorry to trouble you, but the Scout promise must be done with a Scout leader who has pledged an official promise, a leader’s promise.’ We said: ‘Come on, what is the difference?’ And he says: ‘Well, that's a major difference. That's simply a major difference. We leaders promise to educate entrusted youth in the spirit of Scouting ideals. Who did you pledge to?’ And I said: ‘There was only Bohouš Vítků, and we made a small bonfire.’ ‘That doesn’t count.’ So he organized [a ceremony] for us - for the boys who have pledged like that before. So he carried out a valid promise for about five boys who were originally from his group. Well– and he included us too, so we made the Scout promise there with him.”

“He invited us in, yes. And one of the first answers to our questions about whether Rychlé šípy (The Rapid Arrows) were real was, as I already said, that he reached into a drawer and pulled out an album where he had photographs of various boys, and he labelled some of them as the Rychlé šípy boys. We learned much later, as adults, that they weren't Rychlé šípy at all. Of course, they were just, as I would say, models for [draftsman] Jan Fischer or later Bohumil Čermák or Marek Čermák, the last one. So, they were selected models of Rychlé šípy according to the photos of some boys from the club. But the fact that he showed them to us completely astonished us.”

“It went like this, that, to our amazement, the gravediggers of Junák from 1970 weren’t ashamed to stand at its head. We were surprised, because we thought first of all that they’d be ashamed, and secondly that the community wouldn’t accept them. But it did.”

“We know of several tragic cases. In the first case it was the tragic death of Josef Zikán - Beaver - who chose suicide rather than sign on to collaboration with State Security. That was in 1976, when he hanged himself in the attic of his home in Košíře.”

“In reaction to the events, me, Mirek Kopt and Ivan Makásek wrote up a declaration, which we named Syrinx. We didn’t dare sign it at that time. We sent it out to all the groups in the Czechoslovak Republic. It caused quite a stir in the leadership of Junák, as it got into the hands of the party authorities thanks to the party group. They saw it as dangerous. The Syrinx declaration recommended disbanding without shame.”

“So we founded the Association of Scouts and Guides of the Czech Republic. Many of us moved to the association as organisers of sorts. Ivo Vacík is the mayor of the association, a former ‘Fiver’. It seems to me that this was also a somewhat strange evasion. Maybe we shouldn’t have left Junák, because we abandoned the battlefield too soon.”