“Two hundred chosen soldiers were sent on foot through Syria to Palestine. Jarek was among them. Klapálek trained them, they fought in Syria and then they disembarked in Tobruk. Jarek spent the whole time in Tobruk as a driver of a tank destroyer and in the end, it exploded with him. A friend with whom he drove once came to visit him. He talked about their tactics. ‘We had tactics that Jarek invented. He did not hide. When we saw the Germans, we went right towards them, and I was shooting at them until we destroyed them. A mine exploded under us once.‘ So, they were quite direct. General Montgomery came to see them and shook hands with Czechs. He said about the Sahara that it was cold at night and there were flies and it was hot there in summer. He was later treated in Cape Town and was transferred to England where he worked in a workshop. When there was an invasion, he went to the sea and got a medal for it. On 15 May, he called, and my dad went to get him. He gave us petrol and Dad was happy with the way it was going, there was only some low-quality one available here. He did not want to stay a soldier, they offered him a job on the general staff, but he did not want it. He used to visit us in Sněžné. He got married, and because they did not give him any work, he rode with coal until he retired."
„My mum had to work in a flax mill and my dad, the leader of our family, had to retire. His pension was four hundred and twenty crowns. Mum´s shops had been nationalized and we simply handed over the keys and left. No one can imagine it nowadays. And some people were even enjoying it, they said: ‘Look, they had already been evicted.‘ We moved back to Nové Město and they moved another family to our flat. Staněks lived under us and Mr Ludvík Staněk was imprisoned during a big action which was called New Town Charity. JUDr. Vojance, Ing. Petr Peňáz were imprisoned together with him, they were from the Catholic Charity, and they imprisoned them. Well, they also moved another family to Staněks´ flat. A police officer just came and said: ‘Another family will live here.‘ And nobody cared that it was yours. They were just trampling on everything.”
Ladislav Slonek was born on 12 June 1940 in Sněžné to a family of cabinetmakers who manufactured the first skis in the Vysočina Region. The Sloneks family owned a sawmill in Nové Město na Moravě. He spent his childhood in Sněžné where his mom owned a bookshop. His family was friends with many cultural personalities at that time who used to go to Sněžné for holidays. The Sloneks lost the sawmill as well as their house after the Communist coup. After some problems, Ladislav Slonek was admitted to a secondary school and later to university. He graduated from the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology of Mendel University in Brno (back then it was the University of Agriculture in Brno). He worked there as the dean since the 1990s. He also had a successful sporting career. He was involved in the development of cross-country skiing courses around the world and served on the board of the cross-country section of the FIS (International Ski Federation). In 2023 he lived in Nové Město na Moravě.
Meeting at the airport in Singapore. Bengt Eric Bengtsson, the International Ski Federation President is sitting with Ladislav Slonek. The photo taken on 12 June 2000
Meeting at the airport in Singapore. Bengt Eric Bengtsson, the International Ski Federation President is sitting with Ladislav Slonek. The photo taken on 12 June 2000
