"We had a crazy boss. He had a lot of knowledge, but he was confused. And he, among other things, assigned me a top secret mission, a 'plant pathogen as a means of combat'. I couldn't believe what I heard him saying. He said, 'You know, Josef, the Americans might drop a clover leaf infected with anthracnose over our territory and all the clover on the field will perish! And what are we going to feed our horses with?' I said 'Well, yeah, but today, the army is already mechanized, it's no longer the horses that are pulling the machinery.' 'Yeah, yeah, ... You're right, you're right ... '"
"My grandfather belonged to the Klimentíci and they walked all the way from Bohemia to Volhynia on foot. They transported their property on a cart that was pulled by a Saint Bernard dog! All the way to Volhynia."
"I had a conflict with my teacher, Mrs. Křížková, because we were supposed to have foreign language classes, but we had no teacher, only somebody who could speak German. I organized a strike. I protested against being taught German."
"That was the so-called Kvasilovská group of soldiers of the Czechoslovak army. They were deployed in the villages for a certain period for subsistence living and lodging. There was a certain Kohout staying with us. I wanted to show off that I spoke German, so I said, 'Herein,' and I almost got slapped."
"They were burning down the villages, it was called Kupitkiv there. They burned down half the village. It was a time when people went out and looked - there's a glow in the sky, or there is a glow. I've heard about Czech Malín. And one more village, they burned it down together with the Ukrainians. Its name was Sergijevka."
Josef Vacke comes from Zdolbunov in the Polish part of pre-war Ukraine. He was born on 1 April, 1929. His family maintained regular contacts with Czechoslovakia. His father was trained in the company Laurin & Klement and subsequently tried to establish himself as an entrepreneur in the Ukraine. In the fall of 1945, Josef went on a troop transport to Czechoslovakia and started attending high school in Zlín. His parents and his brother followed him two years later. He graduated from an agricultural school and became a specialist in cereal virology. After graduation in 1953, he joined the Research Institute of Crop Production in Prague. In the 1950s and 1960s, he dealt with crop infections which occurred as a result of the collectivization of agriculture. He is the author of over two hundred scientific articles in several languages.
