It feels good to be one of John Pilger’s heroes. In the chapter on ‘A Prague spring’ Pilger writes: ‘It was the silence of the millions who made the men and women of Charter 77 such heroic individuals. People did not touch them in the street and whisper encouragement. The eyes averted from foreigners were averted from them … The Chartists I met and filmed in secret … The risk they incurred was ill defined, and there was nothing to reassure them, or ourselves, that having touched their lives we had not condemned them. Only their insistence to speak as free Czechs, and their courage, were certain. “If I knew,” said Julius Tomin, a teacher, “that tomorrow I go in prison for it, I shall talk to you anyway”.’
Then comes the
eyesore: ‘At thirty-eight, Tomin had endured much. He had refused the
military draft and had been sent to a psychiatric clinic for two years.’
***
In Czech we
have a saying ‘na každém šprochu pravdy trochu‘, which is on Google
pedantically rendered as ‘Every statement contains a kernel of truth‘.
When I
refused the military draft, I was sent to prison. I saw the communist regime as something that had
to be challenged. I knew that it was built on the teaching of Marx, and Lenin,
but I knew nothing of what they were saying. I saw my imprisonment as an
opportunity to do something about it. I remember reading Lenin’s State and
Revolution, but there was nothing by Marx. I insisted on getting Marx’ Kapital,
and in the end the Head of the prison lent me his copy. Marx’ Kapital
fascinated me.
Released
from prison, I worked in a forest, and I decided to apply for the study of philosophy.
I lived with my father in Slovakia in those days, and I wanted to go to Prague
– I was born in Prague. The application form required a CV. I asked the Head of
the Forestry, who happened to be the Head of the Communist party organisation
there: ‘Shall I put the imprisonment in my CV?’ He replied: ‘Are you a fool? If
you put it in, you won’t be invited to the entry examination.’ I left it out.
It was easily done, for I was imprisoned for 15 months, I went to school a year
early, and in course of the school reform I jumped a year.
I was
invited to the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University. The examination
board had five members, but I remember only two, Professor Popelová and docent (Assistant Professor)
Milan Machovec. We talked about my reading of Lenin and Marx, the members of
the board appeared to be impressed. Then Milan Machovec asked: ‘Tell us, didn’t
you have some serious problems in your life?’ And so, I talked about my
imprisonment.
I was not
accepted, but Machovec asked the examination board to entrust him with my
tutelage.
Summoned to
the military service, I became a soldier – or almost a soldier. For one became
truly a soldier only after making an oath at the end of a month of preliminary
training. After three weeks of it I became ill; inflammation of kidneys. I was
sent for two months to a military sanatorium, and then released.
What could I
do, with my CV, who would give me a job? Milan Machovec decided to intervene. A
friend from their days at gymnasium (a secondary school) was a psychologist at the
Psychiatric hospital in Dobřany, near Plzeň (Pilsen). To him Milan applied for help. I became an
orderly, and worked in the psychiatric hospital for two years.
***
What follows
the eyesore? Pilger writes: ‘After 1970 Tomin was prevented from teaching his
speciality, philosophy, and the only work he could find was as a nightwatchman
at Prague Zoo. He eventually lost this job.’
In fact,
after 1970, having returned from a year as a Visiting Professor at the
University of Hawaii, I went to work to the Prague powerplant, where I worked
for five years. After five years I had enough of it. Milan Machovec provided
for me a stipend from West Germany, 300 Marks a month, which, turned into Czech
money was twice as much as I was getting at the powerplant as my salary. But
these things that could not interest Pilger.
What
follows is impeccable: ‘His wife was also denied work and their eldest son,
Lukáš, was barred from
any form of higher education or apprenticeship.
Summoned regularly to interrogations by the secret police, Julius Tomin
refused to answer questions “on the ground that the legal requirements for such
an interrogation were not fulfilled; I myself had not committed any crime”.
Inevitably, there would come a point when the interrogators would exclaim, “Mr
Tomin, you commit a crime with every step you make and with every word you
say.” “One morning”, he was told, “you will be found dead in a ditch.” (John
Pilger, Heroes, pp. 467-468.)
Towards the
end of ‘A Prague spring’ Pilger says: ‘In August 1980 Tomin asked permission to
study abroad, and this was granted. In May 1981 he was called to the Czech
embassy in London where his passport was confiscated and he was told that he
and his wife were deprived of Czech citizenship. Today Julius Tomin teaches at
St David’s University College in Wales. Generously, he wrote to me “Every
visitor from abroad brought with him an oasis of normal, non-frustrated human
communication. In a sense, our interview and similar publicity in the West was
the price to pay, and it was worth it. To refuse an interview would have meant
giving in and accepting the unfreedom as an integral part of my life, and I was
not prepared to live unfree”.’ (pp. 471-472)
No comments:
Post a Comment