Josef Weinfurt

* 1950

  • "I was in Holešov too as a furtier, but Holešov was a college focused on protecting the state border. Then when I served in Nýrsko, I was already in the Public Security, I had nothing to do with the border. Because there the western border was still guarded by border guards. Classic border guards. The western border was not guarded by policemen at all. We were a normal department. But of course, afterwards, when they abolished the border, when they abolished the wires, I don't know what year it was, those border guards - because they abolished the border companies - that was Jezero, Hamry, Svatá Kateřina, so those guys came over to us, as police, and served normally in the district departments. A lot of them went into civilian life, but some of them came to us and became normal policemen. Even though they at the beginning - like that - they somehow stayed in those departments, but they made it something like on that socialist border, yes, they did, because the Iron Curtain fell, so they stayed in those companies. But then they came to me for training. I was a fighter by then. Some of them came to us, some of them stayed there, but in the course of time, I don't know what year, they closed down those former companies. Some were razed, some became recreation centers, and some went into private hands. For example, Hamry, which is completely abandoned, the company on Poledník, which was closed down, razed to the ground, Debrník, which is still standing, but Polom company, you can't tell today that there was a company there before. So that's how it ended then."

  • "Karel and I were so action-oriented, physically fit, so we rolled up a newspaper and, like, it was a knife, so we did the knife fight, because it was part of the training at that time, how to eliminate the enemy, quietly, without a weapon, just with a knife, and so on, so we were always fooling around like that. There was a lot of bullying, but if you were very physically fit - and being physically fit in the army was a plus - the best thing to do was to find an old hand, fit man, challenge him to a fight, beat him, and you had peace. That was a tactic. Of course, there were those graduates, those Slovaks were a bit tougher, but I wasn't bullied there, neither was Karel."

  • "Those of us who didn't have it, and there were more of us that didn't go through the paratraining, so we did the whole steam training there. And because it was in the winter, well, we were jumping into the hardened sand and all the chases, and the first jump, of course I remember that, was from Ilka. They took us to Košice, and we got on a plane there, and from Košice we were thrown out over the airport in Prešov, and the plane came back because it couldn't land there, everything was frozen. So they threw us out and the plane came back. I remember that because of the weather I took off in the plane several times and we didn't land, we came back to the airport in Košice and they took us back to Prešov by bus. That was about forty kilometres, it wasn't far. But the first jumps were from Ilka, on the so-called hold. From Andula, from the AN2 plane, we jumped on the so-called tear. This means that the canopy from the parachute was tied in the plane, one jumped out and the canopy cover remained in the plane. The person's parachute opened immediately after the first few meters after leaving the plane. But when you jump from the Ilka, it's a much higher speed, it's a big airplane, it had to be tilted like that, when you jumped, and you jumped on the so-called jerk. That is, one jumped with the canopy packed, with the parachute, and the jerk was that it opened only the flap on the packed parachute and the flap released the so-called pull-out parachute. It was like a feather, a little parachute that basically fit in your hand, but as it opened it inflated with air, so that's how we jumped from Ilka and that was my first jumps in Slovakia."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Klatovy, 26.08.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:12:36
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Paratroopers were always the elite.

Josef Weinfurt, Basic military service, Janovice 1971
Josef Weinfurt, Basic military service, Janovice 1971
zdroj: archive of a witness

Josef Weinfurt was born on 31 December 1950 in Stříbro, Pilsen, and grew up in Klatovy. His mother Jarmila, née Lamplová (born 1928), came from Plzeň and worked as a clerk all her life. Father Josef Weinfurt (born 1910) came from Zbůch near Pilsen. He worked as a mine locksmith and later as the head of the planning department of the Klatovy district council. Between 1965 and 1968, he trained as a forester at the forestry school in Modrava. After the conscription he enlisted in Prešov. He was originally supposed to serve in the so-called scouts, but because of his physical fitness he was transferred to the paratroopers. He completed his basic service with the Deep Reconnaissance Company in Janovice nad Úhlavou. After the war he abandoned the idea of further education in forestry, where he had no chance without protection. At the recruitment to the police, then Public Security (VB), he was offered the possibility of further studies. He entered the SNB (National Security Corps) high school, and subsequently graduated from the SNB (National Security Corps) College in Holešov, 3rd Faculty of State Border Protection. Because of his studies he had to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He started at the Department of State Border Protection in Luby near Cheb. In 1980 he got married. Because he did not want to be in the Border Guard, he sought to transfer back to the Public Security Service. Eventually, as a married man with a child, he got a job at the VB in Nýrsko. He worked there until 1989. After the revolution he worked as a chief in Švihov, after a year he moved to Klatovy, where he stayed for the next sixteen years until his retirement as a police fighter. He was in charge of shooting and combat training of police officers. As an enthusiastic sportsman he took part in many athletic, cycling and running races. In the 1980s he was at the birth of the Water Rescue Service and its junior section in Klatovy. A lifelong sports enthusiast, he is still active in sports, especially his favourite cycling. Josef Weinfurt raised two daughters and enjoys three grandchildren. He lived in Klatovy in 2023.