"Sometimes I managed to get to the church in Libava, but it was never mass. So, it usually turned out that one priest and two of his friends, who ministered to him, went there. In one case, I also experienced a Mass there with a Catholic priest in a meadow. There was no altar, he only had a host and an improvised chalice, for which a bigger shot was enough. So, the most difficult thing was in Libava. Later, when we were moved to Lipník, Hranice, or another town, it was actually only a matter of getting a leave permit and going to the church at the appropriate time. I don't remember any problem that arose from the fact that one of us was there."
"The army declared that I am healthy and thus I came under the military authority. If I run away, they would consider me something of a traitor. So, I got three days to move from Litoměřice to Prague and then to Libava. I completed it all and joined the Company X on October 3, 1950. It was a company made of similar cases as I was, for example from men who did not join the war in due time. Most of them were pastors, kulaks, former hoteliers from Karlovy Vary and similar existences. So, the company X was not very compact, unlike, for example, purely kulak or parish companies."
"Two Jesuits managed to escape from the centralization monastery. There were storages of vegetables and other things in the cellar. So, they managed to get to the cloisters from a potato storage and eventually escape. I think that they subsequently managed to continue going abroad. As a result, however, it was a lot stricter in the monastery. However, the two did early enough, before the daily routine even ran and tightened."
Josef Loub was born on December 5, 1929 in Prague. Already in the pre-war years, he became a member of the 7th Scout Squadron, whose core staff met after the ban in 1939 and combined their activities with events in the church of St. Ignatius on Charles Square. After his graduation in 1948, Josef‘s formative experience here during the following years motivated him to join the Jesuit theological school in Velehrad. He studied there until April 1950, when he and all the other novices were transferred to the centralization monastery in Bohosudov as a part of the so-called Action K. On October 3, 1950, he received a call-up order and joined the Auxiliary Technical Battalions unit in Libava. His originally two-year military service was gradually extended to three years and three months. After graduating, he was placed in the Armabeton company, where he worked for more than a year and subsequently was able to transfer to the position of laboratory assistant at the Faculty of Science of Charles University. After the first unsuccessful attempt, he even managed to start studying at the faculty, and in 1965 he graduated. At that time, however, he had long ago resigned his position in the Jesuit order. Josef Loub devoted himself to X-ray structural analysis for most of his life. Since 1994, he was an emeritus professor at Charles University, from which at the beginning of 2020 he received a gold medal awarded to important personalities associated with the school.
