Josef Dvořák

* 1942

  • "That's when we started surfing. I got a surfboard and we learned to ride it. One day, I did nothing but crawl up on it on one side and fall off the other. Standing up on the board? Unbelievable. We took it to Slovakia, a dam lake called Dubinka near Senica. There were heavy winds... I had open calluses here [on my hands] from the way I held on to it. And I almost rant into a pedal boat, it got in my way, so I jumped over the boat. I bounced and jumped over them, they were staring at me like I was crazy. I couldn't swerve so I went over them. Had I hit them at the speed I was going - it doesn't seem like it but it's very fast - there would be some serious injuries. That's how we rolled. Then we went with the boys to Budva, and there is the Jas camp. There's a man-made, concrete beach. There are concrete slabs with sand put over them. When the waves hit, they lift up on the slabs and it makes huge caps. We had a boat there at the time, I had an inflatable boat that I put a mast and rudders on. We'd go into the waves with this, and when you got up on that wave, the inflatable boat would fold... It was like rough seas, and the ugly stuff that was there! The water was just black, and when you came out you had a lump of that stuff caught under your swimsuit and were all dirty with the churned mud. There were also showers there, so you took a shower. Amazing experiences..."

  • "In those camps there were Czechs, Slovaks and the occasional Pole. The locals, the natives who were there selling schmucks and what not all knew broken Czech. We learned a bit off them... I learned to say 'bread' and 'peaches' - it was written there, so I repeated it. Or you pointed to it. We didn't talk to the locals much since we were mostly in the camps. We enjoyed the sea. Sometimes we went to Šibenik or to see the Plitvice Lakes. That's about walking. Other than that, we just loved it. It was different then. Those were beaches where you could actually lie down."

  • "The boarding school wasn't bad, it was like military service. It's just preparation for life, that's all. Then, when we started working, suddenly, wham, we joined the army. What about that? We went to the barracks and those of us who had been out of homes and used to boarding schools just approached the military service as boarding school. There were guys - aged nineteen - who would cry under the blanket. I was on duty and I was like, 'What the heck is that?' Mummy's boy. The current generations could use some military service because that's when people find out what life is like when you don't have somebody behind your back telling you not to do it. That's when you learn what it's like to be independent and responsible for what you do. I think that's what young people today lack."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Úholičky, 10.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:43:08
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

If you want something, you have to take care of it.

Josef Dvořák as a young man
Josef Dvořák as a young man
zdroj: Witness's archive

Josef Dvořák was born in Úholice, Central Bohemia on 11 June 1942. He went to the kindergarten and the first stage of primary school in the village. He recalls the end of the war, the air raids on Prague and the arrival of Russian soldiers from his childhood. As a boy, he used to hide Russian ammunition at home, which he and his friends found in a pond. He trained as a locksmith and his life was connected with shipbuilding from his youth. Right after school he joined the Czech Shipyard in Libeň. He only ‚skipped‘ working there to serve in the military as a driver. In 1968, he joined a strike at the shipyards to protest against the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. The strike lasted only a few days. He stayed with the company until it ceased operations after 1989. Even under socialism, he tried to travel a lot, visiting Yugoslavia with his family. From the 1990s until his retirement, he worked for a private owner, manufacturing yachts. He retired in 2002. He is married and has two sons, Tomáš and Petr. He lived in Úholičky with his wife in 2023.