Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

Interview with Mr. Jan Pospíšil
Where were you born and what was your childhood like?
I was born on August 13, 1916 as the second son of the math and physics professor who
taught at the first vocational secondary school in Brno. I wasn’t born in Brno, but in Černovice
near Tábor, which was a small town in Central Bohemia. During WWI when I was three months
old I caught dysentery. It even went so far that our family doctor said, “Mrs. Pospíšilová, this
wasn’t meant to live, put it on the side.” He said that about me. Today he would probably be
amazed because the thing that didn’t look like it would live is almost 92 years old.
The majority of my life I spent in Brno. I attended the fourth real school where I also graduated.
If I remember correctly I wasn’t one of the most obedient kids in school. I was the head
of the class who always got into trouble somehow. I graduated in 1934 and 1935. I graduated
in both years because I wanted to go study law and I had to practice Latin more. That meant
I had to wait and after a year I had to take the special graduation exam in Latin. I also wanted
to improve my German so I signed up for the German Technical School in Brno. There I got
my first lessons in politics because that place was a stronghold of Nazism. What I remember
was that there were three of us pureblooded Czechs. After passing Latin, I started at the Law
faculty where I was studying law and doing sports. I did rowing, athletics, hockey, and dancing
(he laughs) I lived a happy life.
Did you study law in Prague or Brno?
I studied law in Brno because the faculty in Brno had a much better reputation then the one
in Prague. There was a Professor Vážný, who was the European authority in Roman Law. Then
there was Professor Vejr, who was an expert on constitutional law. Also Professor Baxa taught
there. We had a really good array of professors, but there were also disadvantages to that, for
example when we went to our first state exams, out of eighteen students who entered the exams
there were three of us who passed. I studied quite hard and the majority of exams I passed
with honors. I finished the Law Faculty just in that unlucky year when they closed down all
the universities 1 in the Czech Republic. I was also hit by that because just before I entered the
graduation ceremony, and despite the fact that I had passed all my exams, the universities were
still shut down. So I was a lawyer without a graduation ceremony, that didn’t matter though.
At first I got a job in the Pension Institute in Brno where I stayed for about three months. The
Pension Institute was divided into Czech and German offices and the Czech one was getting
smaller. There it was natural the last man who came was let go. So I started to visit various
shops and workshops of radio businessmen. I helped them to repair and fix radios, which other
1 On the occasion of student Jan Opletal’s funeral who died after the hard demonstration repression made by Nazi occupation
power, another demonstration was held on November 15, 1939 which was the last demonstration of aversion
towards the Germen Nazi occupation on Czech and Moravian land. On November 17th, Hitler gave out the command
that all demonstrations will be strictly punished with the army power. The Czech universities and colleges were closed
down, the main representatives of university students were locked up and executed, 1200 Czech students were beaten
and dragged to the concentration camps. In 1941in London November 17th was pronounced as the international day of
students.
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