Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

Interview with Mr. Augustin Bubník
First let me ask you about your childhood and place of birth.
I was born on November 21, 1928 in Prague, so in the zodiac actually I’m in the last week
of Scorpio. Scorpios have always been proud fighters and they were able to get together and
do the best thing in every situation. In 1928 when I was born, according to my mom and dad,
there was terribly frosty weather. Even while they were taking me to my baptism, they thought
we would freeze. So I was probably predetermined to frost and to ice hockey. It proved true
already during my childhood. My father was a butcher and he worked in a slaughterhouse. My
mom was a shop assistant at a butcher’s. They both came from Southern Bohemia to Prague
and we all lived in Holešovice in Prague 7. My mom was a big Sokol attendant 1 , so she used to
take my sister, who was two years my junior, and I, to the Sokol training area at Libeňský most.
There was an ice-rink created each winter. There we actually started to learn to ice-skate. Then
I found out that there was ice near our household, at Štvanice Island, where you could ice-skate
and play ice hockey.
When did you start to play the major league hockey game?
After the war, the major leagues were the Olympic games in 1948, where we pulled off an
upset by tying Canada, with a score 0-0. For Canada it was a shock. Up until that time they
kept coming to Europe and beating Czechoslovakia. The first match against Czechoslovakia
in 1911 was 30-0 and then we were only losing by 20 and later a 10 goal difference. Canada
was coming to Europe for a World Cup and it was a vacation for them, they were beating everyone
around. It was a shock for them when we ended up 0-0. After the end of the Olympic
games there were conflicts between the captain Vladimír Zábrodský and the head coach Matěj
Buckna. Coach accused Zábrodský of establishing the wrong tactics – we should have played
offensively, not defensively. Buckna kept disputing that each of the players had a big chance
and opportunity to score a goal, and the Canadians as well. Thank heavens we had a great
goalkeeper, Mr. Modrý, and the match ended 0-0. We got an invitation to Canada, to measure
our strength against some Canadian teams at home. At that time there were only 6 professional
hockey teams playing in Canada.
What did your “seditious” activity consist of?
In that post-war time they were flaunting us as the most popular European hockey team
from LTC Prague 2 . Every New Year we played in Switzerland in a tournament called the Spengler’s
Cup. Right after the Olympics in 1948, the whole team got into a conflict with Czech immigrants
from LTC Prague, those who were already living in exile 3 in Switzerland. The people
in exile asked Mr. Zábrodský, as a speaker of the team, to organize our stay there. That would
1 Sokol – The Czech association of Sokol (ČOS) is a civil association, whose almost 190 000 members attend voluntary
sports, which include physical activities in clubs.
2 LTC Praha – abbreviation for Czech ice-hockey association (1903–1950).
3 Exile stands for absence of a man or a group in a home country. In consequences of deportation, expulsion, stripping
citizenship, political, national, race, or religious chasing.
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