Escape on a hang-glider (article)

“When they took me there for the second time, I knew that I had no more dream to live in this republic, to have my home in it anymore. That’s when I decided to get the hell out of here. I didn’t know how yet, but I speculated.”
Vladimír Príslupský (*1948)

He rescued hotels, finally escaped across the border on a hang-glider
Prepared by: Pavol Jakubčín

He was not allowed to go to the hotel school in Vienna, finally Vladimir Príslupský escaped to the West on a hang-glider. After the fall of the regime, he returned to open his own guesthouse in Slovakia.

Vladimír Príslupský was born on 22 January 1948 in Klokočov (Michalovce district) in eastern Slovakia. He grew up as a “proper socialist boy,” hearing at school about how nice socialism would be and how capitalism would liquidate honest people. He was active in various village organizations and in the Czechoslovak Youth Union. In 1968, impressed by the enthusiasm of Dubček’s reforms, he joined the Communist Party out of his own conviction. After his secondary school studies, he completed basic military service. During this period, the Czechoslovak Communist Party was also undergoing party purges. Although Príslupský openly admitted during interviews before the party bureau that he was against the entry of “allied troops”, his membership in the party was not withdrawn.

After completing his basic military service, he worked in various junior positions in the catering and accommodation services sector. At the age of 23, he had the opportunity to work as a manager of the Drienica – Lysá mountain hotel (Sabinov district). He accepted the offer and in the position of hotel manager, which prospered under his leadership, Príslupský gained a good reputation and many contacts. For this reason, the State Security tried to oblige him to cooperate. However, he refused the offer to cooperate: “I am not the type to inform on anyone. I have never done that and I will never do it. I want to remain friends with you [the StB – State Security (transl.)] but I don’t want to cooperate with you.” Because of his refusal to cooperate, it was almost impossible for him to get permission to go on holiday to a capitalist foreign country. During this period he completed his education in his field and graduated from hotel school. As he wanted to learn German, he also enrolled at the newly opened hotel school in Vienna. Although he was accepted, the security did not let him go to Austria.

In 1978 he started to work as a manager in the facility Salaš Veľký Slavkov near the High Tatras. During his tenure, he managed to create a great team of employees in the hotel and renovate the entire facility. Soon the salaš became one of the best rated facilities within the company. “I gained a name and popularity. By having both a name and popularity, one has both friends and enemies. That’s the way it is everywhere and that’s the way it was then.” Subsequently, Príslupský, as a highly rated manager, was given the party’s task of running the poorly performing Lipa Hotel in Kežmarok. After six months of his tenure, the hotel came out of negative figures and started to be profitable.

Príslupský was actively involved in small football and it was during his time in Kežmarok that he and his team became Slovak champions. Together with the championship team from Ostrava, in 1982 they had the opportunity to represent Czechoslovakia at the European championship in small football in Rome. After some problems, he managed to get a travel clause to Italy, but on the condition that he would be personally responsible for making sure that everyone from his team returned. At the championships, the combined Czechoslovak team managed to take 4th place. This, considering the fact that all of the team were amateurs, was a great success. On the way home, the whole group celebrated on the train, adequately to the achievement. In Žilina, Vladimír Príslupský, together with a few friends, jumped off the train for a drink. However, their train, in which they had all their luggage with documents, left them. Their luggage was taken care of by their friends who stayed on the train and they travelled on the next train.

After arriving home to Kežmarok, the group sat down in the castle wine bar belonging to the Lipa Hotel. Here, while the celebration was going on, a state security officer tried to legitimize him. As Príslupský had no documents on him, a conflict broke out between him and the officer, which escalated into a brawl: “He immediately bit me. I got such a fine one, I banged my head on the arches that were there. That’s when I went crazy – you know, when somebody attacks you…I jumped on him and started hitting him. He started running away and ran towards my kitchen.” There, however, sat a group of other state security people celebrating something. They run after Príslupský. “My waiters, when they saw that they were coming after me, stopped them and davaj, brawl…We fought there ‘decently’, as we should.” As a result of this brawl, Vladimir Príslupský began to have security problems. The very next morning, the following day, he was detained and taken into custody (one of the officers falsely accused Príslupský of assaulting him with a bottle, which was classified as an assault on a public official). In the end, the case was not investigated by security but directly by the prosecutor’s office due to bias. The investigation found that the charge of assault with a bottle was fabricated, Príslupský was released and received a sentence for only a misdemeanour. Although the matter appeared to be settled, the State Security officers concerned did not forget about it and began to “take a closer look” at Príslupský.

After a year, he was arrested and charged with theft of socialist-owned property. The accusation was fabricated by the StB with the help of agents deployed from among Príslupský’s employees. He spent nine months in detention and was subsequently released. However, he could no longer work as a manager, so he took a job as a waiter in a tavern. After three months, however, he was arrested again, on the grounds that he might influence witnesses. “When they took me there the second time, I knew that I had no chance to live, to have my home in this republic anymore. That’s when I decided I was going to run away from them. I didn’t know how yet, but I speculated.” After his release, he tried to obtain a fake passport in Poland, but was unsuccessful. So he thought of another way to escape behind the Iron Curtain.

While still working in Veľký Slavkov, Príslupský took part in a hang-gliding course. However, during the course he dislocated his shoulder and did not complete the course. He did not continue flying. In a situation when he wanted to get abroad in any way, he had the idea to fly across the border on a hang glider. He therefore bought an older motorised hang glider from a friend. However, when he wanted to try it out for himself, he damaged the hang glider on landing, breaking the propeller and the wing. The broken hang glider had to be repaired, and just obtaining spare parts would normally have taken several months in the circumstances of the time. However, Príslupský did not have that much time, as he was due to go back to prison in a few days. Thanks to the many contacts he made as a supervisor, he managed to get all the parts to repair the hang glider in four days. Together with the original owner, the sledge was quickly repaired. After a few days, he borrowed a car from a friend, loaded the sledge into the car with another friend and set off for western Bohemia, towards the border with the Federal Republic of Germany.

However, the original place that Príslupský had reserved for the start had overgrown with grass within a few weeks of his first inspection, which made it impossible for the sledge to start safely. “There is such tall grass there, uncut. I tried to take off on it… my friend and I put the sled together, but it wouldn’t take off, it wouldn’t take off on that grass because the grass was holding it back.” So they disassembled the sled and looked for another suitable place to start. They finally found it near the village of Mrakov (Domažlice district), on the road by the pond. However, a cooperativer with a tractor was ploughing a field near the new place, so they decided to wait for the tractor driver to leave. They waited all afternoon until finally, at about quarter to eight, the cooperativer finished ploughing. He and his friend reassembled the sledge, and in the early evening of May 18, 1987, Vladimir took off on his flight to freedom. The friend set off back to Slovakia with the borrowed avia (Czech automotive brand, synonym for truck here – transl.). (On the way back, when Príslupský was already in the Federal Republic of Germany, he was detained and arrested with the car near the Devět křížů motor inn.)

During the flight to the Folmava border crossing, Vlado flew past Spálený vrch (spot of the national air defence system), whose crew immediately reported his movements after spotting him. He knew that he had about seven minutes to get to safety, because after spotting him, fighter planes providing air defence of the state immediately took off from the base in Žatec. As he did not want to get higher with the hang glider, he tried to fly through the valleys. However, after several changes of direction in the hilly terrain, he soon lost his orientation and was not sure where he was exactly. “One valley, another valley, switchbacks, all kinds of flying and I didn’t know where I was anymore.” After a few minutes, high above him, he heard fighter jets fly by, “they turned around and flew back. So when they didn’t come down, I was 100 percent sure I was on the German side.” Consequently, Príslupský decided to land in a nearby meadow. While descending, however, he noticed camouflaged tanks and soldiers. He assumed they were Soviet troops guarding the Czechoslovak state border. (In reality, however, they were American troops already stationed in the German border area). So he took off again and, worried, tried to find a town. He dropped again over the nearest major town and checked to see if it was already in Germany. When he spotted the German signs, he was satisfied. (It was the town of Cham). Nevertheless, he decided to fly a little further. Soon he flew over the town of Roding, beyond which he found a larger meadow where he decided to land. After landing safely on the ground, after about five metres, his engine died because he ran out of petrol. “Only once in a lifetime can a man be so lucky.” He ran to the nearest house (it was near the village of Unterlintach) where he met an elderly woman. From the tension and excitement, he started to speak to her in his native language, the East Slovak Zemplin dialect: “Cetko, ta co tu za valal dole?” The woman just asked him uncomprehendingly, “Was?” Vlado spoke to her again, his heart pounding, now in German: “Das ist Bundesrepublik Deutschland?” After her affirmative answer “Ja, das ist Bundesrepublik Deutschland”, I knelt down and kissed the ground. She thought I was crazy because she didn’t know who I was, she hadn’t even seen the hang-glider, she didn’t find out until the next day when the newspapers were full of it.”

With the help of local people, Príslupský got to a nearby pub, where he got in touch with a friend who had been living in Germany for a long time. The latter gave him instructions on how to proceed, reported to the police, and they agreed that his friend would come to see him the next day. After the phone call, he wanted to pay the innkeeper for the call. The latter asked him for a mark and sixty fenigs. “I didn’t have any, just the whole five hundred. Then the newspapers were full of it: ‘The fugitive paid with a five-hundred-mark!’… I gave him the five hundred mark, he just grabbed his head.”

At the police station in Roding, Príslupský formally applied for asylum. However, the police did not want to believe he had arrived on a hang glider. After two hours of phone calls and verification, the policeman said: “It’s true , they found out that someone flew over Furth im Wald and they don’t know where he landed. So it’s probably me.” Other policemen came to Roding to pick him up and took him away in a car for further questioning. During the journey, he noticed that they were heading for the state border, which made him fear that the police wanted to extradite him back to Czechoslovakia. He therefore considered jumping out of the car and running away. However, the police, who noticed his unease, assured him that they would not extradite him back. However, according to official procedure, he had to be questioned at the police station in Furth im Wald , where he had crossed the border. In the following days, Vladimir also had to undergo interrogation by the Americans and the French.

After staying in the asylum for a few weeks, he started working as a waiter in a restaurant. Thanks to the media coverage of his story and the sale of the hang glider to the Checkpoint Charlie museum in Berlin, he earned money with which he opened his own restaurant after living in Germany for about a year. Longing for home, he returned to Czechoslovakia in 1992. Nowadays he runs his own guesthouse called Rogalo in the village of Mengusovce in the Tatra foothills. “Rogalo, because the rogalo (hang-glider transl.) took me to freedom.”

Source: magazine Príbehy 20. storočia, 02/2023, topic Identity on a plate