Don’t be afraid, just believe
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Josef Mundil was born in 1933 into a family of a weaver in Zelov, Poland (50km south of Lodz). The Mundils belonged among the Czech brethren who had left Bohemia because of their faith and around 1800 co-founded the community of Zelov. His nice childhood was interrupted by the onset of the WWII. His father joined the Polish army and was imprisoned by the Soviets and the Germans. He fled both and returned home. The Zelov school for the Czech children was closed by the Nazis shortly after the outbreak of the war. Josef learned to read and write from his mother and at Sunday school and singing in the Zelov evangelical community. In 1942 he witnessed a public execution of ten Zelov Jews – this experience has marked him for life. In January 1945 Zelov was liberated by the Red Army. In autumn 1945 the Mundils moved to Czechoslovakia and settled in Černošín. From there they moved to Nové Město pod Smrkem. Here Josef was confirmed in an evangelic church and trained to be a textile worker. He continued at the Industrial School in Humpolec. After military service he married a settled in Prague, working in the Jawa factory in Strašnice. After a strike he moved to mines in Kladno, later to Textilní tvorba, Prague. Then he worked in Centrotex and from 1969 to 1971 at Vodní zdroje. Here he met Petr Pithart to who he later helped to distribute smuggled prints and parcels from the West, such as the Svědectví journal. From 1971 to his retirement he was as the workshop master at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.
