When dad played, the old Germans cried
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Jiří Pešek was born in Prachatice on 7 December 1956. He grew up in Volary where his parents came from Vimperk after the war. His father came from a Czech-German family in Boubská near Vimperk and his mother from a Czech family in Malíč near Litoměřice. They met in Terezín where the witness’s father served in the military. The soldiers helped exhume the bodies of murder victims from mass graves and tidying the local cemetery. The witness grew up in a border town that had lost its face and soul due to the developments at the end of World War II. Located near the western border with the the FRG, it swarmed with border guards, counter-intelligence agents and police officers. Jiří Pešek worked with the fire brigade all his life. He made friends with a generation of the local opponents of the regime - Bohumil Harmonický (then still Miroslav Crha), Ivo Stehlík and the Klišík brothers. Jiří Pešek’s father was a train driver and his mother was a cleaning lady. Aged seventeen, he joined the volunteer fire brigade. He went on to work for the local forestry business as a professional fireman. During the totalitarian era, the professional fire brigades reported to the Ministry of the Interior. It was basically a paramilitary branch of the army, but the firefighters in Volary were known for their opposition to the regime. After the Velvet Revolution he still worked for the fire brigade while also starting a private business with his wife. He and his father played the pubs in the border area of Bavaria. The locals were always looking forward to Czech musicians as dad knew old Šumava songs, both Czech and German. Jiří Pešek started his own business after 1989. It took him to many interesting places, for example to the closely guarded Biological Conservation Centre in Těchonín, where extensive reconstruction took place between 2003 and 2007. He has lived his entire life in Volary and raised three children. He and his wife Marie Pešková took part in organising the traditional Volary Mardi Gras and Konopická folk feast. In 2025 Jiří Pešek lived in Volary.
