I haven’t been able to watch the dead even on TV since
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Josef Novosad was born on 18 March 1925 in the village of Mali Zdenci in Slavonia in the then Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. His parents, Jan and Josefa, were descendants of Czech emigrants who came to the area in search of better living conditions at the beginning of the 20th century. Josef spent only the first two years of his life in the village of Mali Zdenci, because in 1927 his parents bought a house with an eight-hectare farm in the neighbouring village of Veliki Zdenci where they moved with their four children. In 1943, at the age of 18, Josef Novosad joined the partisan units. He fought in the ranks of the 1st Czechoslovak Brigade of Jan Žižka of Trocnov until January 1945 and then served as a member of the personal guard of NOAJ Commander-in-Chief Josip Broz Tito until September 1945. In November 1945 he emigrated to Czechoslovakia. Until 1947 he lived in Frélichov (from 1949 Jevišovka), where he also married Emilie Končelová. The couple then moved to a farm in nearby Litobratřice, where they farmed privately before joining a Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD) in 1950. In 1954 they left the Cooperative and farmed privately again for nearly four years. However in 1957, they were forced to re-join the Cooperative. Then they moved to Střelice (today part of Uničov). Josef Novosad then worked as a shunter for the railways, as a grinder in Uničov machine works and in the Papcel factory in Litovel. At the time of filming in 2022, he was living as a war veteran together with his wife Emilie in the Military Hospital in Olomouc.
