An improbable interview on Vatican Radio
Fr. Josef Kolacek S.J. meets P. Antonin Zgarbik S.J.
A distant bell tolling
JK
„I am the grave-digger here at Velehrad in South Moravia. I have been here for forty years, but I have never before had to put earth on an empty grave with nobody in it“. The speaker was a mournful-looking seventy-years-old, leaning in his spade at the edge of the hole dug in the earth and ice. It was January….
And so Father, the communists spurned your last wish, which you had expressed in the prison of Valdice, to be buried among your brother Jesuits at Velehrad.
AZ
That was only the latest example of their unrelenting unjust hatred of a Jesuit, who had also been the „clandestine“ provincial. It was a hatred fed by opposition to God and Christ and to the whole Church.
Even after death I continued to be for them a danger, as if they felt themselves to be openly accused by the silent majority of the people for being, what they truly were, his assassins, Yes, assassins. Obviously, no one spoke that word openly, but the people looked on them, in silence, as being so many Cains. My burial in the basilica at Velehrad which had at first been permitted, was in the end forbidden. And my body was not returned. They very soon knew how the news of my death in prison had spread like wildfire throughout the whole republic… As you well know, they had spies and informers everywhere, who told them how many persons were preparing to come to my funeral and what such a manifestation would be against the regime. For them, any believer was enemy of communism. And so, on that day in January 1965 a notice on the door of the basilica at Velehrad announced that there would be no funeral.
JK
Nineteen hundred and sixty five….
A few kilometers from our country generations of boys and girls were beginning to rejoice in freedom… We, seminarians and young priests in the Czechoslovakian republic, were standing in the middle of that snow-covered cemetery at an empty tomb in silence. That was our only revolution: the church of silence (a wry smile) reduced to silence! Twenty-five of us had come by bus from Brno to accompany you, our dear Father, on your last journey. And on our backs we could feel the eyes of the spies and were aware of their cameras and their binoculars. But we also knew that this was the last injustice that they would be able to permit themselves to take against you…
Tell me, were you not surprised that such an injustice should have pursued you even beyond death?
AZ
Strangely, I felt sure that , nevertheless, I should return to Velehrad. To my home. It was from this dear land that the Lord called me to follow him. It was not far from here, over the hill and hidden in the woods of Chriby, that there was the village of Jankovice where I was born and went to school and as a boy, played many tricks (smiling)
Yes I too had my jokes and pranks. Don´t you believe me? It was there too, when my father fell at the front in the first world war, that I tasted in my month an orphan´s bread….
Yes, I was quite sure That I would come back here and find my two sisters with my mother now long dead… My father, no…in any case I did not really know him… He was buried in Austria, at St Poelten.
But I knew, that I would meet my older sister Maria again and also my dear younger sister who liked me to teach her all sorts of little things
Above all, I knew that my tomb would make the land fertile. Like that of the parish-priest Cyril Bata, who did all he could, knowing that we had no father, and who in the end decided, in spite of our extreme poverty, that I should go to the school of the Jesuits at Velehrad…..
Yes I knew, I would come back here. I knew it also when they took me from my sister´s house at Popice and put me back again in the prison of Valdice. And even when the situation seemed humanly-speaking to be a dead end, I knew that I would come back home.
JK
But why were you put in prison again? Were not the fifteen years you had already done, enough? And besides, your health was very precarious… Do you think that their plan was to eliminate you?
AZ
What can I say, my dear Josef?
I remember the fearful periods of questioning. Even the first lasted from seven to ten hours and always at night. The agents of the Secret Police took turns, so as to give me no respite, whilst they rested and kept fresh.
They were always in twos: one reasonable, patient and well mannered, whilst the other was violent, shouting and offensive, banging his fists on the table and hitting me on the head and the ribs… to abase me physically and spiritually, and always with a satanic cunning to humiliate me terribly and to strike me …..
But even in those moments, I knew that God was with me an saw everything …
The one who punched me in the face shouted: “Admit your fault or you will go out of here stretched out ! which in their slang meant dead. And then when the
punishment came, which was mainly solitary confinement, that same phrase kept coming back obsessively: Admit your fault or go out stretched out!
And then I heard again my mother´s words when I was little: “God is never deceived”
JK
But, Father, solitary confinement is one of the most severe punishments… what had you done to deserve it?
AZ:
During the many interrogations ( and how many there were!) not even the punching ever succeeded in making me say anything that would hurt anyone. That is why I was reckoned to be one of the incorrigible enemies of socialism. That is the class of prisoners who have no rights except to be subjected to the severest disciplinary measures, without counting the continuous vexation of the prison warders or the officers in charge. They were measures, little or great, thought up with cruelty, but the worst was that of the isolation cell.
A stay in that hell lasted a week. The cell was of cement in which the prisoner could not stand upright, there was one blanket, and food was rationed so as to cause hunger, great hunger, a ravening hunger. The cold pierced into the bones; it was completely dark, without even a crack to let in the light – – –
Can you imagine what that kind of torture means? It means losing the sense of ones own humanity with risk of forgetting that one is a person, of forgetting the light of the sun, of the sense of space, of the air in ones lungs, of the shape and dimensions of ones body, of how to make a gesture or to articulate a word…
It was in those moments that there came close to me only Christ on the Cross. I saw his arms outstretched on the Cross and thought of my own arms benumbed in that narrow space, and of my own poor cross, so great and yet so small in comparison with his
(….)
It was only by that that I was able to survive.
…Yes, I had already been in the concentration camp of Terezin, and had known there what torture means. I was terribly weak when I came out, but I had recovered my normal state. When I was arrested at Brno in 1950, on St Bartholomeu´ś night, between the 13th and 14th of April I was as fit as a trout! But then, at Valdice, in those conditions….
JK
Wasn´t it because of your severe attacks of asthma, that the communists finally agreed to your having treatment? And especially thanks to the insistence of your sister Bozena who begged constantly for your punishment to be suspended ? But when exactly did the asthma begin?
AZ
It was in October 1960. It was very cold, with the rain and snow… we were shivering in the cells. In those worn-out uniforms, dirty and sweat-soaked, we were all easy victims in a flu epidemic. When I became ill, the supply of medicines had just run out, and so for me like the others who were ill with me, there could be no treatment. Some came out of it in a week´s time, but in me it developed into serious pulmonitis. The treatment was, let us say, no more than symbolic and so, after a few weeks I had my first attacks of asthma
(…..)
Oh, I remeber how I almost choked. When my sister Bozena succeeded in visiting me, she was shocked. I could hardly speak and was literally breathless, She took my pulse and saw at once, that I had a high fever… She was astounded that in that condition they still made me walk and, even more, work.
Back home, she began to make appeals everywhere and went in person to Ostrava, the headquarters of the tribunal, she went even to Prague, to the Minister of Justice and appealed for my release even from the President of the Republic. Courageous Bozena, she would not take no for an answer. She never received a reply.
But when I got worse, when the attacks began to be continuous, the Director of the prison was forced to transfer me to Mirov, a much milder prison. But my health did not improve even there. They were afraid, that I would die in prison and so become a martyr. That was the only reason they suspended the punishment, and then I was able to go to Bozena at Popice in South Moravia. Her husband was the president of an agricultural cooperative, and that for them was a guarantee.
JK
But how was it possible, Father, that after all that, they were able to put you back in prison? And so soon ?
AZ
In my sister Bozena´s house there was a great peace…. I remember the good fresh country air, the scent of our house… the potato cakes, the pudding sprinkled with chopped poppy and sugar, the goulash with wholemeal bread, , the soup with garlic and cabbage and toasted bread, flavored with garlic… And it was because of this tranquility, the incredible care she had for me and the medicines she got for me from Austria, that my health quickly recovered!
It is true that I still had attacks of asthma, but not all the time: they were much fewer and I could also breathe quite well, walk in the garden, smell the flowers, the peonies, the lilies and the violets. And I could delight in the beautiful panorama around the hills of Palava … and the best of all, I could go into a church, yes, into a church; you cannot imagine, Josef, what emotion I felt on entering a church again after so long a time, and to smell once more the fragrance of the incense. I really think that that fragrance was the best of all the medicines that my ailing lungs received. It was an unhoped-for relief for my body and my spirit which had been so harshly tried.
And yet, you know, even there, in adoration before the tabernacle, I was being spied on. And alas! That was not the only sign that they were continuing to think of me „lovingly“ and had not totally forgotten me. The prison kept continually asking Doctor Grossman, the district doctor of Hustopece, for information on me; you see how much they cared for my health! He knew that he was being watched by the State Police, and often was threatened by them, even openly. Perhaps, because of that, after yet one more demand, his diagnosis in the month of November was The illness is incurable, but there is no immediate danger of death“
(….)
As a result of this they brought me back into the prison within a week. The change from house´s warmth to Mirov cold cells was fatal. Within two months their aim was achieved.
(sound of a tolling bell )
“The illness is incurable, but there is no immediate danger of death”
My sister sent to Doctor Grossman, this phrase, written in her own hand, along with the notice of my death and the funeral. A phrase to be preserved.
Les than two months of renewed attacks of asthma were enough. My death by suffocation took place on 22. January 1965
(music)
JK
I have another phrase, Father, engraved on my memory. It was a phrase, a prophetic phrase of yours. You said it during a retreat for us students in August 1946. At that time I was in the sixth form. Do you remember? It was that phrase that decided my religious vocation. These were your words that rang out in the chapel of the retreat-house “Stojanov”: “My dear boys, a time is coming soon in which our church will be cruelly persecuted. But even so, there will always be found some, who are so crazy for Christ, that, in spite of all, they will follow him still.”
In that very moment I decided: “I will be one of those crazy ones. My memories of it are still clear. The chapel was full of a dazzling light. It was August, the harvest was beginning in the fields, the grapes were ripening on the vines of South Moravia and the vine-dressers were preparing the casks for the new wine
Your voice, Father, was calm and deep..
There will always be found some who are so crazy for Christ that, in spite of all, they will follow him still
From where did such clear foresight come and above all, such interior serenity in the face of so dramatic a future?
AZ
… Everything comes from obedience, even when you might think it impossible. From his very first retreat the good Jesuit tries to obey God´s will perfectly, never forgetting the great Director from whose hand not even the most entangled situations escape. The good Jesuit simply carries out completely what has to be done relying on God´s love and mercy.
All is for God´s glory
For „God is never deceived“…
It is what I have experienced very well in the dramatic unfolding of my religious life. After the novice ship at Velehrad, I was sent to Lublin in Poland for Philosophy and then returned to Velehrad as prefect in the college, For Theology they sent me to Maastricht in Holland, but after scarcely one year the provincial called us all back to the province, because war was drawing near, I did the remaining three years of theology at Hostyn and on 5. July 1940 was ordained priest in Brno cathedral,
(Music)
During my first Mass in my native village of Jankovice there were echoes of the dramatic happenings of the war: the menaces of the concentration camps, the interrogations of the Gestapo, the horror of the Nazis reprisal for the killing of Heydrich with hundreds of executions and all other „delights“ that they could devise.
In the shelter of the Marian Sanctuary of Svaty Hostyn, where I was the assistant of the novice-master, the situation of the young religious was relatively tranquil, until the deportations for work in the Third Reich began.
(music)
In 1944 when the defeat of Hitler´s Germany was in the air, I was named Superior of St Ignatius in Prague. In spite of this I was arrested , together with our students of theology and condemned on the spot to the concentration camp of Terezin. That lasted eleven months, during which we looked death in the face. But clearly Providence needed me for other works and so, at the end of the war, I was sent once more to Velehrad to be rector of the College and master of novices…
JK
That was where I met you, Father,for the second time. It was in 1948. At the beginning of July I presented myself for the examination for entry into the Society of Jesus. And whilst the other three examiners looked at my concrete apostolic capacities, you rather put me on my guard. What you said in warning then has remained fixed in my memory:Remember that the communists will persecute the church (at that time they had been in power for less than six months and remember that the Jesuits will be the first target they will aim for”.
I answered that with a smash as if it were a ping pong ball.
But yes I took good notice of your warning, and I remember you had the first beginning of a smile…
Did you, at that time, foresee what lay in wait for me?
AZ
No, but I had a presentiment of all that did happen. That little smile, you know, came from a memory of my novitate. Our master of novices gave many conferences on the martyrs of Japan and especially on that missionary expedition of thirty novices led by Father Azevedo, who were captured on 15 July 1570 off the Canary Isles, by French Huguenot pirates and after being tortured were thrown overboard into the sea. In those days, in my boyish way, I was so inspired by those accounts that I would willingly have offered my breast to the swords and lances of the killers. Then, I fell ill (it was a slight fever!) and was so troubled that I was almost ready to leave the novice-ship. It was remembering that moment that produced the little smile and the words I said to you…
Even though I spent eleven very hard months in the concentration camp of Terezin, consoled myself with the hope that our own men would never be capable of the cruelty and inhumanity of the soviet communists. But I was wrong. And I was wrong indeed! At Zeliv they had turned a premonstratensian monastery into a concentration camp for superiors with a particularly severe regime. It was there that I saw and experienced in my skin that the Czechs alas ! were capable of the same cruelties as the Germans, if not worse.
When that camp was closed in 1956, they moved us to Kraliky. The communists had created there a concentration-camp for religious in a shrine of our Lady… what magnificent delicacy! The silent naves in which hymns to Mary had been sung, had become a theater of acts of violent injustice. The ancient lime trees and chestnut trees, loud with the buzzing of bees, at the foot of the shrine had become witnesses of endless outrage…. We religious were put to hard labor in the woods and stone-quarries and abandoned farms. Our tools were the most primitive: hoes, spades and picks… It was in that quiet country place of farms that, with calloused hands and the sweat of hard labor, I experienced betrayal…
JK
You mean Vancura
AZ
It fills me with horror to think how that unhappy man will one day have to answer to God, and how heavy a burden he bears for having betrayed other´s trust, and how, for small favors of the regime, he was ready to commit dozens of his brothers to imprisonment, plunging them into that deep sea of suffering and humiliation.
JK
At Brno, Father, we had only brief reports of the trial at Ostrava, which ended in your being sentenced to sixteen years in prison. In the fogs and heavy atmosphere of that autumn of 1960 the details gradually came through, revealing the enormous damage Vancura had caused.
You had known him when he was an altar-boy in the church of St Ignatius in Prague, weren’t you. And then he was a novice at Velehrad… Did you ever think he could sink so low?
AZ
He too had been interned in the fortress of Leopoldov in Slovakia, the hardest of the communist prisons, for bishops, provincials, abbots and professors of theology, in other words, the cream of the catholic church. He was admired by many for the strength of his religious vocation which had been strongly opposed by his atheist, communist parents. With his intelligence, gifts of speech and an almost actor´s ability he could raise the spirits of sad and discouraged protests his fellow prisoners.
But “God is never deceived” … Never
After a year it was said that he was to be released. Both the Jesuit provincials : P. Silhan the Czech and P. Srna the Slovakian, wanted take the opportunity of sending through him their instructions and appointments to their men outside the prison.
He did what they wanted, but, at the same time, he revealed everything to the Secret Police of the State! And so very soon all were taken, imprisoned and condemned in the farce-trial of Ostrava. The sentences threatened were exactly the same as those in the fifties, when our provincial Father Silhan was sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor and the others received little less. The sentences, decided by the communist party were severe preventive sentences such as given to persistent criminals. They ranged from eight to sixteen years for high treason. In this way our attempts to live the religious life even in diaspora were, in their slang, liquidated.
JK
… It was truly tragic, Father…
I was thinking that apart from our two personal meetings, the Lord did not let me meet you, even in your last journey to the tomb. When I joined the novice-ship at Velehrad, you were rector in Brno; when we were all taken (arrested and put into the concentration-camp of Bohosudov) you were under surveillance at Zeliv and then at Kraliky. When I was working as assistant et Brno you were traveling between the prisons of Ostrava, Valdice and Mirov. And in the end not even in the cemetery of Velehrad were we able to meet
I am trying, in vain, to find the sense of all this.
AZ
And don´t you see that in spite of everything, there is precisely in this the hand of God, of the Great Director of history and of human destiny?
“God is never deceived”
Perhaps more times than we can think we have met in Christ, in prayer for each other and in every Mass that we have celebrated… Through the heavenly Post we have had uncensored contact. Haven’t we?
(Music in the background)
… And in every suffering, discrimination and humiliation of this epoch there has been realized everything we asked the Lord for in our spiritual exercises: to be poor with Christ poor, insulted with Christ insulted, held to be fools for Christ because he first was considered to be fool . Making real the meditation on the three degrees of humility, according to St. Ignatius we have been a target for men. They have called us traitors, war-mongers, spies of the Vatican, agents of American capitalism…
We ought not to forget, either, the action of the Holy Spirit, who sowed our priests like seeds into the communists prisons in the 1950’s. Every evening at nine o’clock we prayed for each other, the prisoners for those outside and vice versus, whilst at that hour the priests sent to all their blessing. When Father Fert of the Czech section of Vatican Radio and Fr Polcin of the Slovakian section heard of this, they proposed the idea to the director of the Radio, who agreed at once and put it into effect. For us in the prisons and, later, after our release, it was a great consolation to know that the Pope´s Radio had adopted the practice. At 20.45 the Rosary began and at 21 hours the priest gave his blessing on all the wavelengths to the prisoners and to their brethren forced into silence. You can guess with how great emotion I waited for that moment? I had prepared and studied because it was my profession and my mission in the Society of Jesus to be a preacher, but now – now alas! All I could do was to bless. (But after all, that was not a little thing!) Yes even now today I was ready to bless everyone of you from heaven.
JK
The TE DEUM sung by more than a thousand people during his funeral at Jankovice was for us a sign of the times, a message that the Lord had begun to celebrate his faithful servant.
AZ
The futile and ridiculous attempts of the so-called „ecclesiastical secretaries“ (in reality they were functionaries of the communist party, all-powerful liquidators of the Church´s life)… their attempt, then to eliminate any sign of celebration for my funeral and turn it into a simple burial ceremony, became a real boomerang. Originally the funeral had been authorized and fixed for 26 January at Velehrad. But then they took fright because of the great reaction that the news had caused and especially because of the crowds of people who were beginning together. As a result the funeral firm was forbidden to give the coffin to the family and The Requiem was cancelled.
Then on the Monday morning 29. January thanks to their good relations with the railway workers my family learned that my coffin was in the wagon at the Station of Stare Mesto and that it was be taken to Jankovice in a lorry because the communists had given orders for the funeral to take place that same day. There was to be only one priest, without a cope , with a stole, and without altar boys, holy water, thurible, candles, band, songs of psalms and even without cross at the front of the procession.
But not without God…
What could they do to stop Him?
In spite of all their restrictions, there was an address….
The news spread in all the villages and the little town nearby, and those who could, came on foot or by car. Even though it was Friday, a working day, there was a crowd of more than thousand men, not counting women and children. As soon the procession moved out of the church towards the cemetery , the whole crowd began to sing the Te Deum in Czech spontaneously. Oh Josef, I heard it. Can you believe me? No one had organized it or arranged anything. It was all as spontaneous and natural as the peonies and violets in my sister Bozena’s garden. And in the fourth verse the chant became so strong and loud that it could be heard at Velehrad, in the next valley!
The sadness and the fear, the discouragement and the mistrust faded away and there began to be among the people a pride full of vigor and sense of being witnesses of the death of a white martyr, born in their village in the sweet earth of Moravia….
Because “God is never deceived”…
Even though I could not give the blessing as I did during my first Mass, little by little as my coffin drew near the tomb, I sensed in every step they took the exhilarating confidence that, I had, with my life and with my death, truly borne witness to the announcement of the Gospel.
(1 Cor 2-9 “Eye has not seen nor ear heard…”)
