Jan Sokol

Czech philosopher, Charter 77 signatory, and later Czech Minister of Education (2001) — and, personally, the son-in-law of philosopher Jan Patočka.

Matters to this vault as the family member giving the two most direct firsthand accounts of Patočka's final weeks currently in the record: the sequence from Patočka's 1 March 1977 meeting with Dutch Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel through his interrogation, and a later, more qualified assessment of the StB's own responsibility for Patočka's death — an account that complicates, rather than confirms, the vault's flatter existing framing.

References

• claim-patocka-interrogated-after-van-der-stoel-meeting-died-two-weeks-later
• claim-sokol-2020-says-exaggeration-to-say-stb-killed-patocka