Josef Král

* 1935

  • “In the end, they gave me this job associated with a great degree of responsibility, as I had about five men under my command and we were managing floodlights at the airport, used during the night flights. And there were fighters on alert, Mig 15, who would take off to encounter the enemy, as the Americans had this plane, Canberrea, with two jet engines, which would fly around taking photos. So they would always take off to get him, but this Canberra flew in higher altitude so the Migs could do it no harm and it provided us with decent entertainment. But we always had to floodlight the airfield and participate on this thing.”

  • “Let me tell you about these entrance exams both my sons had to pass. Interesting thing was that Pepík took the entrance exam at a school in Čáslav, the school of agriculture, and when we came home there was a letter in our mailbox stating that he didn't pass it. So this woman from the school's office, who probably took it to the post office, posted it one day earlier so as we came home it was all said and done. That's how the system worked.”

  • “We had been noticed that there was this World Veterinary Congress taking place in Moscow. And our director said: 'Well, you see, books, papers, offer them anything you've got, so they will know that we exist, they won't accept none of you, of course, but write it down, so they will know about you.' So we did as he told us. I told him that they won't let me go anyway and he said: 'Don't worry, of course you won't go.' Then came this letter from Paris that the World Veterinary Congress' preliminary committee voted me in as a deputy chairman of one of the working sections. What to do? 'You will excuse yourself, write them that you are ill.' I said: 'I am in a good shape, I'll write that I can't go to Moscow due to political reasons.' So they made quite an affair of it, they were discussing it, I refused to back down and the director came up with this trick. As there was this organization, the Scientific and Technical Society (VTS), organizing tours having something to do with technology, and it was possible to go with them. So he came up with this idea that VTS, as it had been active at our institute, of course, would organize a tour to Moscow, to the veterinary congress. And as I had to participate, I told him: 'That's just more harm being done to me, I can't go, I can't afford it.' As you had to pay for it, half of the expenses I guess. 'Don't worry, I will give you a special bonus!' So he gave me this special bonus and I went. Such absurdities were going on, you just wouldn't believe it.”

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    Sedlov, 26.11.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:17:13
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

In my life, I was lucky to meet good people

Josef Král in 1940
Josef Král in 1940
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Josef Král was born on April 26th 1935 in Prague‘s (Praha) district of Malá Strana; in 1938, he had moved to Sedlov near Kolín with his family. His mother, née Mandelíková, was Jewish; most of her family managed to leave the country before the war. Josef witnessed the 1938 mobilization. In 1942, his family‘s assets had been confiscated by the Nazis and they were forced to move away from Sedlov. His maternal grandfather, who had remained in Czechoslovakia, had been imprisoned in several concentration camps, Auschwitz being the last of them. He also survived a death march. At the end of the war, witnesses‘ father had been held in a labor camp. Josef witnessed bombing of Kolín in autumn of 1944 and in spring of 1945. After completing elementary school, he wasn‘t allowed to study neither forestry nor agriculture, only being allowed to train as an agricultural labourer by the communist authorities. After his apprenticeship, he had been working at the State Farm and spent his compulsory military service in Košice and, due to an administrative blunder, at the Bratislava airport. While working as a veterinary technician at the Veterinary Service, he graduated from the secondary school of veterinary medicine and after that from the faculty of veterinary medicine. He got married and has two sons. As he had condemned the Warsaw pact invasion of 1968, he hadn‘t been allowed to reach higher academic ranks. Due to political reasons, his sons had trouble being admitted to secondary school. He had been working at the Veterinary Drug Research Institute and had been voted a deputy chairman of a working section at a congress in Moscow. He could attend the event only after an intervention by the Scientific and Technical Society. In 1989, he had embraced the fall of the Communist regime and went on a trip to Austria right away. In 1992, the family got its property back. Josef Král founded his own company and for ten years had been farming his land in cooperation with the State Farm. He has been living in Sedlov, in a house where his mother was born.