"I remember February 1948 like this: I was in the fifth grade and remember the boys shouting out: 'We're on a strike!' I didn't know what it meant. But in the afternoon of 25 February I was at my aunt's villa and suddenly, auntie ran in all excited and said: 'We have won!' I was thinking that it was probably good that the communists won. So I went to see what my parents had to say: daddy was destroyed, mummy was destroyed and my grandpa - a founding member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party - was crying over it. So I could see something was wrong."
"I and my mummy had read his book at home. We had all of the materials he was quoting there. And we found out that either he was quoting them inaccurately - withholding things - or that he'd done it sloppily, or outright fraudulently. But nobody could say anything because this came as an order from above."
"This is one of my fully authentic memories. My daddy's travel suitcase was lying on the table in our appartment in Kouřimská street when daddy said: 'I will only leave tomorrow.' Mum replied - literally quoting Erben - 'Friday is an unhappy day - go today!' Dad apparently angrily closed the suitcase and left. Mummy then took me to her sister's in Dejvice where I had been spending the spring to get some fresh air. Mum was left behind in Kouřimská street on her own and indeed - at 6 a.m., the Gestapo came over."
František Xaver Halas was born in October 1937, in Prague to a poet, František Halas, and art historian, Libuše Halasová. His parents brought him up in Christian faith although they themselves had left the church. During WWII, he witnessed his father‘s transition to semi-illegality in Kunštát and Tišnov where he was hiding from the Gestapo in the local sanatorium. František X. Halas finished elementary school in Prague. He then graduated from a grammar school after which he spent five years studying history and teaching at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts. From 1960 till 1962, he underwent compulsory military service. Thanks to his knowledge of French, he spent most of the time as an interpreter with the air division in Přerov. In 1968, he moved to Brno where he worked as a scientist and translator for over two decades. In 1990, he became a diplomat, he was the first ambassador of Czechoslovakia and later of the Czech Republic to the Vatican. He returned to his homeland in 1999, lecturing in church history and the history of diplomacy at universities in Olomouc and Prague. He and his wife, Dagmar lived in Brno. They had two daughters. František Xaver Halas passed away on November, the 24th, 2023.
