He hid CIC agent František Hašek in the family mill.
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Josef Neustupa was born in Dolní Bezděkov near Kladno on 12 June 1920. His father was a builder and his mother a miller - her family had owned a mill in Dolní Bezděkov for generations. From his youth Josef helped run the mill. Following primary school, he completed a two-year milling and baking school in Pardubice and started working in the family mill. The mill was nationalized in 1950, but Josef Neustupa was employed there until the end of 1952 when he joined the technical audit section of the Spojené ocelárny (SONP) steelworks in Kladno. From 1945 to February 1948, he was a member of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party and the treasurer of the Local National Committee in Dolní Bezděkov from 1949 to 1950. Neustupa’s acquaintance František Hašek, a former wholesaler and official of the Czechoslovak People’s Party who had fled to the American occupation zone in Germany in late 1948, appeared in Dolní Bezděkov in June 1949, returning to his homeland as a CIC agent. He was tasked with trafficking certain dignitaries across the border. However, the StB soon found out about him and he sought help from friends. In June 1949, Josef Neustupa hid Hašek at the family mill, and after about a week he arranged another hiding place for him with his friend František Mátl. As the StB was looking for Hašek, he could not fulfil his task and crossed back to Germany with the help of Mátl and his acquaintance František Štěrba. These events transpired six years later and Neustupa, Mátl, Štěrba and Hašek’s brother-in-law Miloslav Cýrus were arrested on 12 December 1955. After two months of detention in the Ruzyně prison and investigation, all but Mátl were sentenced to heavy sentences by the Regional Court in Prague on 15 February 1956. Josef Neustupa to ten years, František Štěrba to six years and Miloslav Cýrus to five years. František Mátl could not be sentenced because he fell seriously ill during detention and died of the disease on 19 February 1956. Josef Neustupa was successively imprisoned in Ilava, Senica, Podbrezová and finally in Ilava again. He was released on a presidential amnesty in May 1960. He worked as a labourer, then drove a bulldozer. Even after release, he had to appear for interrogations at the StB in Kladno several times. He met František Hašek again in 1994 during his first post-1989 visit to the Czech Republic. After the fall of communism, he was honoured as a participant in the anti-communist resistance.
