"When in 1962 it was being decided where to move the Urx´s plants, it was decided that they could be moved to Valašské Meziříčí. There used to be a potato field on that site, then an airport, there was a main railway line, and most importantly there was water. The Rožnovská Bečva and Vsetínská Bečva met there, and a factory was built on that site. When I used to lead excursions, I used to tell them that the biggest operation we had in the chemical plant was water. All the water has to come, it is used to produce process steam, electricity, it is used to produce heat, the whole of Valašské Meziříčí is heated from there. In Valašské Meziříčí it´s very clean, because DEZA heats there. And it heats with gas. All the water that is there is purified. It has to be cleaned of all the organic matter that the biological treatment eats up. Ammonia and everything else. What it doesn't eat are the salts. When the tar is coked, it contains the elements of the entire Mendeleev table. The first distillation, when the level is opened and cleaned, there's mercury. In quantities of 10 to the minus sixth it is in the water that runs off the tar. There's silicon, germanium. Molecule by molecule, it's getting into the device. The purified water is carefully released into the Bečva. They have to check how much water is flowing. If it is below 1.3 cubic meters per second, DEZA has to stop the water intake and has to use well water and water from its own reservoirs."
"I worked as a tram or bus conductor, but also as a mine locksmith. I had to be there at 5.30 in the morning, get dressed, take a lamp and a helmet and we were dropping down at 17 metres per second. The miners were already there, we came in at the end and removed. That is, we went to the mines that were no longer being digged and where the pipes that were the source of power remained. You couldn't run electricity, you couldn't spark. So it was dug with pressurized air. We dismantled the pipes, transported them to the shaft, and they were taken up there. There were both standing and lying shafts. We once worked in one of these flat shafts. When we wanted to leave, I couldn't move. At that time, shafts were 40 centimetres wide. The seam above us had dropped and I didn't even notice. I was pinned down, so they cut me off a little bit, I climbed out and that was it."
"During the liberation in 1945, the Germans were firing drumfire at Zábřeh. One shell after another was fired from the mountains at Zábřeh to stop the Soviets. When the Russian soldiers were passing by the stream near our house, a grenade flew and hit a small wall. We had been all in the shelter, we went out to greet the soldiers, and at that moment the shell fell. There was a chestnut tree growing between Dad and the shell, and it ended up chipped. Daddy had a single splinter on his chin. But one of the soldiers had his lungs torn open by the pressure wave, and people wanted to take him to the malt house for treatment. Dad wanted to use his experience in healing, and to make the soldier feel better, they wanted to carry his rifle. But the soldier didn't let it out of his hand. It was his only security. They carried him there, but his lungs were so damaged that the soldier died."
"Dad worked in Zábřeh and in the churches in Postřelmov, Svébohov or Sudkov, which were smaller mountain areas where Dad used to go in the summer by bicycle and in the winter by sledge. Once he apparently met an angel there. He was cycling, it was during the war and it was a problem to get tyres. When the wheel got punctured, you took another tyre and put rubber under it. Everything went to the army in those days. Dad was riding this way and his bike was leaking. So he was trotting along beside the bike, and he met a guy riding by on his bike. He gave him his bike and said he'd fix his. Daddy borrowed the bike, went to celebrate the mass, and as soon as he rode back, his repaired bike was there. He had never seen the man before or since. They used to ride serpentines there then, they called it Hambálky. One day Dad was riding, it was already autumn, it was dark, and suddenly a huge white figure appeared in front of him. Dad got scared, stopped. And then the figure spoke: "Oh, it´s pastor. Good evening.' It was the partisans who were scaring the Germans like that. When a car drove by, it was only the Germans. They had to brake a lot in the serpentines, and then a man on stilts appeared, wearing a huge tarpaulin, and he smashed the windshield with a stick or a club, and before the soldiers recovered and took out their weapons, the man jumped off the stilts, packed up the tarpaulin and hid."
Daniel Košt‘ál was born on April 30, 1938 into the large family of the evangelical pastor Jan Košt‘ál, whose father Jan Košt‘ál died in Russian captivity in 1917. The family moved to several parishes, including a five-year missionary journey to St. Helena in Banat, Romania. While he takes wartime memories mainly from family stories and his father‘s memoirs, he himself spent almost 50 years at the DEZA tar works in Valašské Meziříčí and remembers the time when the chemical plant was being founded. He graduated as a chemist from the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. Throughout his life he was an active member of the Evangelical Church and an organist. He married his first and last love, Ilona Jakobová, whom he met at the age of 15.
