I was never afraid

Download image
Zdeněk Filípek was born in Sviny near Veselí nad Lužnicí on 16 June 1933 as the second of four children to farmer Jan Filípek and his wife Božena, née Vondrášková. His parents farmed 29 hectares of land and the father was a horse trader. During the war, partisans stayed on the farm overnight and the father helped them buy cattle. Little Zdeněk used to distribute the money for the cattle to the individual farmers by bicycle. After the communist coup in 1948, he was not allowed to attend high school as the son of a “kulak” or work on the family farm later on. His father Jan Filípek, the mayor of Sviny until 1948, refused to join the farming cooperative (JZD) and was deployed on forced labour, deprived of his property and imprisoned. Both sons served in the punitive PTP military units. The family was displaced to Zběšičky at the end of 1955. After the November Revolution of 1989, some of the property was returned to the family in restitution, but the family farm no longer existed at the time. Zdeněk Filípek used some stones from the original barn to build an annex to his house in Chotýčany where he spends his retirement.