The Gestapo wanted to make my mother speak after giving birth and refused to take her to the hospital
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Vítězslav Malý was born in Pankrác Prison on 23 May 1943. His father Josef Malý owned a prosperous construction company and joined the anti-Nazi resistance before the war began. With his cousin of the same name, the secretary of the Union of Airmen, he took part in organising the illegal transport of Czechoslovak airmen abroad from the Protectorate. Vítězslav’s father let the airmen stay in his apartment, provided them with false documents, and secured their passage using the Balkan route via Slovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia both financially and with his contacts. He had to hide from the Gestapo from 16 February 1942 on. He stayed with friends and then in a secret room in his home. On 12 March 1943, the Gestapo arrested his pregnant wife Vlastimila and took their two young children to an unknown location. Josef hid again with friends and after a while he found out where his children were interned. He was able to arrange for their transfer to the care of relatives, likely through bribing. In the meantime, Vlastimila gave birth to Vítězslav in Pankrác prison and died about seven weeks later, likely from a poorly treated infection. Vítězslav was then handed over to his uncle with whom he and his sisters spent the last two years of the war. His father came out of the underground in May 1945, took all his children with him, and in 1946 married Marie Hašková who raised Vítězslav and his sisters. In 1948, the communists seized his father’s construction company and accused him of not reporting non-ferrous and precious metals he had purchased for the upcoming construction of his house in the mid-1950s. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and forfeiture of all property. Vítězslav was not recommended for university studies in 1960 because of his background. He trained for a telecommunications mechanic, spent ten years building telephone exchanges, and was only then allowed to study at a technical high school. From 1972 on, he was a teacher at a telecom vocation school, completed his ‘teaching minimum’ course and then university at last. He worked as a teacher until retirement in 2011. He lived in Prague in 2023.
