Josef Horčic

* 1945

  • “So I would like to go back to the history of my father, who spent decades studying at high schools in Prague from 1939 until 1950. He was one of those students, who were taken to concentration camps on 17th November, 1939. There they had to work the profession they knew. My dad was a developer by then. So I have his index and his letters from the concentration camps, from which I know what he has been through for the past ten years. And that knowledge that I gained later and which my father did not directly tell me, so my feelings were strong enough in the sense that I did not realize throughout my life, what problems he actually had and what happened during those ten years. Because he got married after returning from the concentration camp, he had already two children in the 1945, and then he was still studying and completing his studies. In 1949 his wife died. And at that moment, before graduating from college, he left the communist party in 1950 and refused to take the exam of... now I do not know what it was called - it was either political economy or something like that. So he did not complete college studies, he was fired from work, and had to look after two children as a widower.”

  • “As I was good at maths, I wanted to study the same secondary engineering school as my father. But I did not get there as they told my father it was his fault. I had to keep studying, as back then the eight-grade schools were ending and nine-grade ones started, so I just stayed. Then I got to the middle general educational college, which took three years. That meant 10th to 13th grade. Before that there were eleven-grade and twelve- grade schools. As I did not get to the engineering college, I had to stay in the ninth grade. It was easier to get to the gymnasium than to engineering college. But according to my father´s information, he was the reason I could not study straight away.”

  • “And the reasons, when they were sought, so it was in tolerance and freedom of thinking of the German organizers to handle the Olympic Games in such a peaceful and friendly atmosphere. And they did not want to restrict the athletes in the sense they´d remind them of the Olympics in Berlin in 1936. So as for the security the Olympics were relatively worse than some Olympics in Mexico, Tokyo and so on. To give you a concrete example, here is a legitimation or a pass to an Olympic village without any code to secure it was not forged and so on. You just had it like that and you could get in. If you needed to stop, then you had to show this card where you could actually change photos without any problems. At the other Olympics, everything was encoded much better and so on.”

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    FTVS Praha, 07.11.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:01:58
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Sport is not about competing, but rather comparing

horcic_dobove_foto.jpg (historic)
Josef Horčic

Josef Horčic was born on 25 May, 1945 in Czech Budweiser. His father was one of the students arrested during anti-Nazi demonstration in autumn, 1939 and sent to concentration camp. Since early childhood Josef was very active in sports; he mostly devoted his time swimming and athletics. When he started attending the Faculty of physical education and sports of the Charles university in Prague, he already decided to devote himself to sports professionally. In 1972 he participated in the Olympics in Munich, where the Israeli sportsmen were kidnapped and then murdered. Past the end of his active carrier he trained sportsmen and since 1992 worked at the Faculty of physical education and sports at the Charles university in the laboratory of sports motoric.