I regret not fighting with a gun in my hand

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Josef Platz was born in Prague in 1937, where he experienced WW2. As a child he could not estimate danger appropriately, but felt scared, when they had to hide from air-raids or when the Germans were taking the neighbours from the surrounding houses to use them as live shields from the tanks. Josef Platz studied the Czech Technical University (ČVUT) and following 1967 also FAMU, as he enjoyed the animated production and documentary movies. Josef Platz always inclined to art; since his youth he played theatre, mainly pantomime. He founded the group Pantokaberet and later cooperated with the mime Boris Hybner. In 1962 he married a reporter, Eda Kriseová, who was banned any activity at the beginning of normalisation, and Josef had to feed the family himself. First he worked in Supraphon and later as an external co-operator in the Czech TV, where he c-created the program for children called Studio Kamarád and a puppet show, Jú a Hele. Following the velvet revolution he became the head of a certain documentary creative group in the Czech TV.