Antonín Doležal

* 1929

Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
Progress: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
 
1x
  • "Well, it had consequences. He lost his job, right, and was a taxi driver after that. It also had the effect where my brother pretty much... We stayed on good terms but he didn't trust me anymore. I didn't approve of his attitude. I told him I thought it was no good."

  • "Professor Hynie [Dr. Josef Hynie] came to see me one day. Professor Hynie and I were very friendly despite our age gap. We were very open and spoke 'without a filter' so to speak. He mentioned gay males and said this was something that needed correcting. Such were his arguments. I told Lukáš [Dr. Josef Lukáš] what Hynie had told me, and Lukáš thought about it and said: 'Poor guys. They miss out on so much, and yet they should be punished for this on top of it all?' So, using his diplomatic approach, he achieved for Czechoslovakia to become the first country in 1960 where homosexuality was not punishable. Dr. Lukáš made it all happen through his diplomatic approach, really."

  • "I was offered to head a San Remo maternity hospital back in 1968. While I was there, I cured an Italian millionaire of constipation, and he wanted to show his gratitude and offered me this. At that time, when the Soviet troops were already here, I merrily chose freedom because I wanted to do what I enjoyed, and here is where I had earned it. I couldn't leave people who depended on me here and say, 'I have this now...' and be an obstetrician in San Remo, you know, 'signora this and signora that.' That wouldn't satisfy me; I'd been working in research here. As we said: research is pushing forward, asking questions, and not being content with what there is, and so that was the driving force of my life, you know?"

  • “Opinion influence? The greatest authority for us was our father, for sure, he was a fighter. When the war broke out in Spain, Dad started working for Red Aid and later organised border crossings for social democrats who were escaping from Germany through here to Hungary and onwards. Dad took part in that. And let’s say that back then Dad had already started leaning more to the left. And there was one incident when the Alexandr Ensemble was here and my parents went to see them perform at Lucerna. And no one was allowed to get in touch or speak with the musicians, it wasn’t allowed. But Dad was surprised to see that the there were members, legionaries of Medek’s independent unit from the right-wing part of the legions there, in the auditorium, who clapped and were enthusiastic supporters of an alliance with Russia at the time. You see, when you look at it the way it’s seen from a present-day perspective, it’s all shifted, but seen as it was back then, it was different.”

  • “A legionary lived next door, a retired friend of Dad’s, and the whole time, from dusk till dawn, he listened to the radio, all kinds of stations, and scrounged for news all through the war. That was his life. He spoke Russian, no other [foreign] languages. And he ran, saying he’d heard: ‘Churchill, India, twenty millions’, and he said: ‘Mrs Doležalová, this is it! Churchill is in India, and they’re preparing a twenty-million-strong army of Indian soldiers, who’ll come to the aid of the Russians – I guess we’ll be liberated by the Indians.’”

  • “Then came the occupation. The Germans drove up and down Crown Avenue, they had such terrible cars, it was called the tin circus. Dad was in the bathroom, burning all of the documents. Some two days later I was in Čáslavská Street, and one gentleman was just crossing the road. Suddenly, he made a run for it, a car drove up, two people jumped out and started shooting. They shot him in the leg, I just happened to be there. And the man who was there, who they’d caught, was German. So I told Dad about it, who didn’t say anything of course. Then after the war, he said that he [the German in Čáslavská Street - ed.] had been waiting for someone. So that was as close a shave as it gets.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, Dejvice, 18.07.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 02:47:09
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory of the Nation: stories from Praha 2
  • 2

    Praha, 30.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:21:30
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 3

    Praha, 15.12.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:22:07
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 4

    Praha, 08.02.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:57:01
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 5

    Praha, 07.03.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:51:25
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 6

    Praha, 05.04.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:53:53
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 7

    Praha, 23.05.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:51:19
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Where there is honey, there is bile. Things and heroes are not monochromatic

Antonin Dolezal - younger
Antonin Dolezal - younger
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Antonín Doležal was born in Prague on 20 January 1929 as the second son to Marie and Antonín Doležals. His father was a Russian legionnaire, a supporter of President Masaryk, and brought both his sons up accordingly. In May 1945, the witness took part in the Prague Uprising. He decided to study medicine at age 12. While a student, he worked as a demonstrator and volunteer at the Institute of Pathology and Anatomy and the head of the physiology lab of the Institute for Mother and Child in Podolí. Having completed Charles University‘s Faculty of Medicine in 1953, he took up the secondary physician job at the hospital in Kladno, but his name is mainly associated with the obstetric hospital at U Apolináře where he headed the obstetric ward for six decades. In 1945, under the influence of his older brother Jiří, he became a member of the Communist Party. Unimpressed by the further political developments in society, he never became politically involved, concentrating entirely on his work. He retained his leading position at the Institute even during the normalisation period, after his brother‘s signing of Charter 77, and in the turbulent days after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. As an obstetrician and gynaecologist, he became a respected expert in the Czech and international professional community, winner of many awards, and author of numerous professional and popular publications. The doyen of Czech obstetrics lives with his wife Jana in Prague (2024).