They started to shout at us they will shoot us
Josef Kuda was born on 17 July 1931 in the village of Suchý in the Drahanská vrchovina as the youngest of six children to parents Jenovéfa and František Kuda. His father fought in the World War I, was wounded and then worked as a tailor in Russian captivity. Right at the beginning of the World War II he had problems with the occupation army. As a boy, his son Josef had several dangerous encounters during the war, not only with German soldiers but also with the Gestapo. He was caught stealing a confiscated radio, he was hanging around in the forest when it was forbidden to enter, or he and his friends were caught trying to take firewood out of the forest on a sledge. At the end of the war, they procured weapons and narrowly escaped the fire of German soldiers, only to eventually escape the danger of being shot thanks to the liberators. He witnessed the execution of at least eight members of Vlasov army who were shot by the partisans. He and a friend discovered a mass grave of innocent victims from nearby Vícov on the edge of the village. In 1948, the witness trained as a tailor and worked in his father‘s tailoring shop. He applied to join the police, graduated from the SNB college in Jeseník and, thanks to his excellent grades, was assigned to the special unit „Jasan“ in 1950 to protect government officials. During his five years in service, he guarded most of the ministers of the time, including president Antonín Zápotocký. In 1954 he married Alena Stránská and they had two children, Ivana (1955) and Luboš (1957). From 1955 he served in Brno, Knínice and finally until his retirement in 1986 he worked as a member of the SNB in Boskovice and reached the rank of captain. In the sixties he was awarded as the best SNB member of the South Moravian Region. He was never interested in politics and took things about the communist totalitarianism as a necessity of that time.