The Germans made it clear that we were scum
Josef Adam was born on 29 January 1932 in the majority German town of Proboštov near Teplice. As a result of the annexation of the Czechoslovakian borderlands to Germany, the family had to adapt, and he attended a German school. As members of the Czech minority, the Adams experienced various hardships, including physical violence when the Germans took their father away for questioning in March 1939 and brutally beat him. After the end of the war, the witness helped disarm the Nazis and collected ammunition and weapons in the forests. When he finished town school, in 1947 he began to apprentice as a toolmaker at the Teplice machine shop. Then he enrolled in the secondary industrial school and after graduating from the school he started his compulsory military service as a personal driver for the commander of the airport in Milovice in 1953-1955. After finishing his service, he started working in the Teplice machine shop. In 1960 he married and, in order to better provide for his family, he succumbed to pressure and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He remained a member until 1968, when he decided to surrender his membership and resign from the party in the wake of the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops. He had to leave the company and could only continue to do menial jobs. In 1989, Josef Adam became a founding member of the Civic Forum in Teplice, but soon decided to leave politics due to conflicts. He retired in 1992 and at the time of recording (2023) lived in a cottage in Císařský near Šluknov.