Remembering Noël Choux, the French priest who resisted Soviet communism

Noel Choux (third from left) at his 70th anniversary party at Bourgogne, Pontigny Abbey in France on May 15, 2016. Photo by Josef Beranek.

It was straight out of an adventure novel, recalled the French priest Noël Choux who helped his colleagues in normalization-period Czechoslovakia, a time following the 1968 Soviet invasion of the country.

The Kremlin’s military takeover squashed an attempt to ease restrictions on speech and move further away from socialism. During normalization, the government took over economic enterprises, re-established ties with socialist countries and gave the police extreme authority. The communist police often kept hidden cameras to watch everyday people and especially critics of the regime.  

The police often arrested Catholic clergy and anyone distributing religious literature. Some were beaten and killed. Choux secretly supported his colleagues in the clergy and after the 1989 Velvet Revolution which ended communist rule, he became executive producer for religious programs, working with Czech puppeteers and animators, and then a national chaplain for Christian police in France. 

After moving back to France in his older age, Choux never forgot his Czech friends. When Choux celebrated his 70th birthday, more than 200 people came to Burgundy, where traveling artists and friends serenaded him in a large circus tent. 

On April 10, Good Friday, Choux died at age 74. He had suffered from a neurodegenerative disease for over a year.

Religion Unplugged correspondent Martina Mašková in Prague talked to Choux a few months before his death. The following is an edited conversation:

Martina: You like Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, written during the famous Czech composer´s stay in the U.S. You told the La Croix Daily that you feel its gentleness and strength, tenderness and fullness. Where does your interest in this music come from? 

Noël: I think I’ve always loved the New World Symphony, Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances and his melodies in general. But when I visited his country, my relationship with his music gained a whole other dimension. 

Your relationship with the Dvořák´s home country began in the 1980s, when you met with priests from Czechoslovakia at Lake Balaton in Hungary. What did you talk about at the time?

Noël: Priests that had been secretly ordained were there. Some were fathers with children, and all of them had civilian jobs, just like me. They told me: In Czechoslovakia, we have to work to be inconspicuous, so State Security won’t come for us, while you chose a civilian profession voluntarily in France. Why? We exchanged ideas about what it meant to be a priest while simultaneously having a different profession. At that time, both France and Czechoslovakia had very few believers.

You said you were shaken to hear from Czech colleagues about their arrest or beatings. How did that change your idea about life behind the Iron Curtain? 

Noël: I was surprised, because we had misinformation about that in France. Some politicians and artists returned to France from Czechoslovakia and said: Everything is ok there – there is freedom. And then suddenly I heard about a priest who had been beaten and others who had been tortured. Some of the people I knew even confided these experiences to me. One priest told me that when he came out of the infamous prison in Prague's Bartolomějská St., his face was bloody, his nose broken –  and he wasn’t the only one to have received this treatment. It was something unimaginable to me, and my sympathy for the Czech people only grew.  

Did your secret meetings in the 1980s or your trips to Czechoslovakia include some kind of material assistance? 

Noël: We paid for our Czech colleagues’ trip to Lake Balaton, petrol, and then for their accommodations. 

You were able to continue your friendships behind the Iron Curtain thanks to your civilian employment. What were you doing at the time and how did it help you get across the border? 

A portrait of Noël Choux.

Noël: They whole thing was straight out of an adventure novel. We were always terrified, but with God’s help things worked out.   

Officials in Czechoslovakia under normalization didn’t know you were a priest?

Noël: No, I always listed my other profession. I was a television producer and I also trained journalists, so I wrote that I was an educational advisor. This profession apparently did not frighten the regime.

So you never needed the skills you used as a marketing expert or a travel agency and supermarket manager at the border?   

Noël: No (smile). I had to be discreet in order to keep meeting with the priests and their families and support them. My Czech friends were wise people with great inner depth. These meetings had an enormous impact on me. I recall how once I was returning from the beach at Balaton with the priest Václav Dvořák, who was telling me his about his extraordinary life. I asked him how he could live with it – the torture, coping with this terrifying period. He stopped, looked me in the eye and said: I know that God exists. That was the first time I’d heard that in my life. I was in awe.

How did your Czech friends adjust to the new situation following November 1989, when the Church could begin to operate publicly? 

Noël: Cardinal Miloslav Vlk asked me to come to Prague, not only to help in setting up basic media, he also wanted me to maintain contact with the priests I mentioned above. This time I was witness to a turning point in history, to the transformation of the country. And yet, the new-found freedom also brought problems. I also experienced the arrival of multinational corporations, the period in which money started to have great power.

You founded the production company IMAGO in Prague in the 1990s. Of the films you produced, a series based on a puppet version of Czech protestant pastor Jan Karafiát’s children book Beetles was particularly successful, as were your educational films on world religions. Where did you find financing? 

Noël: I continually travelled to England, Belgium, France, Germany and Holland to apply for grants, and I also needed funds for education. Under communism, Christians were not allowed to work in the media, so we had to find young people willing to go abroad to supplement their education. 

How many people did this involve and how many films did you make together? 

Noël: We trained 20–30 people this way. I think we made six animated films and around fifty documentaries and television magazines. 

Were your films distributed abroad? 

Noël: Yes, they were successful outside of the country, including DVD sales. A large number were sold in France, England, the Netherlands, Austria and Latin America. Besides Czech and French, we produced English, German and Spanish versions. 

Your contacts made it possible to offer work to young (motion-picture) animators at Jiří Trnka’s studio in Prague. Were you able to find money for these people elsewhere in Europe? 

Noël: The French government helped out in this case. They financed the salaries of the young people so that they could work with experienced professionals and learn from them. Another goal was to ensure that know-how wasn’t lost with the departure of the older generation. This was a two-year project. 

After 9/11, you made a film about the emergence of the great world religions and distributed it in Czech and French schools. What was the response at the time? 

Noël: It was a challenge. We wanted to show the beginnings of all three major world religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and encourage a dialogue between them. We observed a slight anti-Muslim reaction, but the response was otherwise mostly positive. 

You became the head chaplain of the French Police once you retired, and in this role you experienced the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. What impact did it have on you? 

Noël: Before they asked me, I knew almost nothing about the police and the policemen. I got to know their difficult profession and tried to be close at hand for them, which gave me the opportunity to give them encouragement. I told them that their profession was important: the police in France are often referred to as guardians of the peace (guardien de la paix), which is the seventh beatitude in the Bible (blessed are the peacemakers). I tried to accompany the police in all of their life dramas, telling them that God loved them.

The police officers who faced off against the terrorists at the Bataclan Music Club in Paris clearly experienced difficult moments... 

Noël: I spoke directly to those police officers who participated in the raid, and their wives and children, who had been terrified of losing their fathers in the gunfire, were also there. These were difficult and powerful moments. I also experienced suicides among the ranks of the police. It was necessary to speak about it with their families and colleagues. Those were difficult nights.

After leaving Prague, you managed a network of Christian television stations in the overseas territories of France, but you didn’t lose contact with the Czech environment...

Noël: I travelled three times a year to the Czech Republic in order to follow the work of IMAGO and to meet with my friends. To this day, I pray every morning in Czech. Czech is the language of my prayers and a bond with what I experienced before. It gives my life rhythm and meaning, and I pray morning, noon and evening. I live something like a monk.

Noël Choux (left) in Prague with his friends Vaclav Maly (middle), auxiliary bishop of Prague and Petr Kolar, a Jesuit Catholic. Photo by Zdena Folprechtova.

How have your Czech friendships continued after leaving Prague? 

Noël: We had a chance to speak thanks to modern means of communication like the internet and mobile phones. 

You once mentioned that you are moving to the Tatras (mountains in Slovakia). Were you serious when you said it, or was it just a joke? 

Noël: Václav Malý (who was Charta 77 speaker in communist Czechoslovakia, one of the most chased dissidents) and I would say to each other that we’d leave the city and live in the mountains, but that was more of a dream or a joke. We weren’t lucky enough to be able to withdraw from the world and live like hermits...

Václav Malý became a bishop...

Noël: and I spent my life in an airplane traveling around the world.  

You live in Paris today. How do you look at your life from the perspective of a serious disease? What moments in your life do you regard as important? 

Noël: It doesn’t look like I’ll manage to perfect my Czech; due to my illness, I would flunk pronunciation... (smile). I am happy to have had such an active life. Now, when I really can’t do anything, I am left with my memories. I lived a full life. It is difficult to become dependent on someone else. But thanks to my friends and thanks to God, I have accepted my illness. I still haven’t lost my courage, and I continue to pray.

In addition to businessmen and a cardinal, your address book also includes traveling artists. You have also accompanied them in recent years. What did meeting them bring to you? 

Noël: Extraordinary friendships. These are my Roma friends of Spanish origin who breed horses. Their leader regards me as his brother. This friendship has enriched me tremendously.

Martina Mašková is a radio presenter based in Prague, Czech Republic. She hosts Day By, Lab and Context programs of the Czech Radio Plus. She previously worked for the BBC in Prague and London. She is an alumna of The Media Project Coaching and Leadership Fellowship at the Poynter Institute in 2016 and is on Twitter at @martinamaskova.