MUDr. Jiří Blecha

* 1940

  • "The last time I came back from Kuwait, because we were there three times in one year, so the last time I came back, when I was on my own, I came back through Italy. I got off in Rome where I met up with my brother. I know we were on one of those Roman hills in the evening looking out over the city. And he said: 'Wouldn't you like to run away?' And I said: 'Man, I don't know if I could stand it. I just don't know if I could stand to be without that Czech.' So, it never occurred to me."

  • "I once went to look at the flying field like this and it seemed to me that they were no longer flying. So, I went after one of the guys who were towing the planes to the hangar. And suddenly at the last moment I saw that I was going against an airplane that was attached, of course, behind the truck that was towing it. And I flew into the outboard tank on the wing. It knocked me off the pioneer and I felt like I was bleeding terribly. And then I smelled the blood and I found out that it was this fuel called elerix. Fortunately, I was unharmed. I perforated the outboard tank of that plane by my knee. The whole thing ended up with me being called in by the commander of the regiment that was there at that airfield at the time. And when I got there, he said to me: 'So I hear, doctor, that you're going to cancel our combat equipment. But don't worry about it, we had a jalopy and all that was left was the outboard tank.'"

  • "I went to a French kindergarten in Prague and we had a teacher, I think she was French. She was wearing this velvet dress once and towards the end of the war she went to open a window and suddenly there was a bang and the teacher fell into the room dead. So that's one of those memories of the war. Then I remember being with my relatives in Vinohrady. This was probably towards the end, the beginning of '45. There was a big bombardment on Prague. And my mother came for me with a baby carriage and took me home to Plavecký Street, which is by the Iron Bridge in Prague, in that baby carriage. And in the meantime, Prague was bombed. There were fires everywhere and it was very unpleasant and we went very quickly, or I did in the carriage, down home."

  • "My grandfather later became a professor of pathology, microbiology and hygiene in Lviv. During the World War I, when there was a great cholera epidemic and Lviv was besieged, he worked there, of course, and received the Order of Franz Joseph from the Emperor. He was a health councillor and my mother was born in that Lviv. My grandfather later after the end of the war, of course, moved to Bohemia, to Brno, where he became the first dean of the medical faculty, today's Masaryk University. And in the following year, the rector. Then he was entrusted with the great task of building the State Institute of Health in Prague, which he did. And that institute today is called the Institute of Serums and Vaccines. My grandfather secured exceptionally good salaries for his employees. Unfortunately, the tuberculosis continued and my grandfather eventually died of it in 1928."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Hradec Králové, 10.05.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:05:43
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War in childhood memories. A shot teacher, Germans hanging from the street lights

Photo from recording.
Photo from recording.
zdroj: foto ve studiu

Jiří Blecha was born on 20 July 1940 in Prague. He comes from a medical family. His grandfather was a renowned pathological anatomist and bacteriologist Prof. MUDr. Pavel Kučera, who served as a chief staff physician in Galicia during the World War I and successfully fought against the cholera epidemic in Lviv. His parents, MUDr. Dagmar Kučerová-Blechová and MUDr. Jiří Blecha, worked at the children‘s clinic of Prof. MUDr. Josef Švejcar in Prague and later they were at the birth of the paediatric clinic in Hradec Králové. Jiří has a brother Ondřej (born in 1943). After graduating from grammar school, he graduated from faculty of medicine and decided to specialize in surgery. He graduated in 1963. After a year of military service, he worked in the surgical department of the hospital in Pardubice. In 1968, Ondřej‘s emigration to Switzerland hit the family. Jiří then devoted himself to open-heart surgeries in the extracorporeal circulation at the Cardiosurgery Clinic of the Hradec Králové University Hospital with Prof. MUDr. Jaroslav Procházka. Four times they were together in Kuwait, where they performed operations with local doctors. In 1976, MUDr. Jiří Blecha joined the hospital in Trutnov as the head of the surgical department. He worked until his 80th birthday. With his first wife, teacher Maria Blechová, he has a son Jiří Blecha and a daughter Barbara Cermanová. He has four grandchildren: Michaela, Ada, František and Eliška. In 2022, MUDr. Jiří Blecha lived with his second wife MUDr. Alena Fuxová in Trutnov.