Josef Plíhal

* 1946

  • “It was the twenty-first of August, Wednesday. Mom woke me up, I must have had an afternoon shift because I was in bed in the morning, and mom woke me up. She was crying. And she said we were occupied by the Warsaw Pact. I had already finished the military service, and my mother said: 'Pepík, you have to go to a military unit, we can't give up after all. It's better to die standing than to live on your knees.' That really moved me. So, I went to Karlovy Vary to the nearest unit, my guys were there, recruits, so I went to meet them. Of course, nothing could be done. They told me how it went. The Russians said they came for water, but they had to be unarmed, so they were allowed there. Those officers then left the army, there were purges. My cousin also went, he was a major in Štětí and was fired of the army and demoted to a common soldier, after 1989 he was given back his rank."

  • “Dad was disappointed by that time. In the army, so that he would not have to enlist in the Wehrmacht, he went to live in Prague. There he found a place to live and met my mother. He had two more siblings. His brave brother Hans died in the very first year in Poland during the war. His sister Johana, my aunt, whom I didn't get to know either, signed up for the Germans, so they [with Hans] stayed here. She eventually died in a concentration camp, the Germans themselves executed her because she was carrying some information somewhere. I saw that with my own eyes, the report that she was missing. But I don't know what concentration camp it was in anymore. I cannot remember that. But I saw the report with my own eyes.“

  • "What was it like in the fifties... Parents were worried about us because a pedophile was also found here. I know of one younger boy who was raped, I won't say his name. It was a wilderness here. People made money, there was a ticket system, there was nothing on the market, so the miners went to the pub. There were fights. We went to school in the morning and there was blood on the sidewalk at the public house. But nothing was published. Jáchymov was a forbidden zone. There were checks in Dolní Žďár, if you know about it. When my aunt came here from Prague, my grandmother, my second aunt from Prague, my dad had to get a pass for them. In Dolní Žďár it is in the places under the former Škodovka, there is an industrial zone there. The track from the station from the island led here, the motorcycle drove here, it led over the road, there is also a tunnel in the bend below Jáchymov. So, they stopped the bus and the train and the green one came and checked the documents."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Karlovy Vary, 17.03.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 56:36
  • 2

    Jáchymov, 04.05.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 35:29
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After the August invasion, he wanted to fight, he soon saw how his friends were serving the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

Witness Josef Plíhal in military uniform, with his then-partner Věra, 1960s
Witness Josef Plíhal in military uniform, with his then-partner Věra, 1960s
photo: archive of the witness

Josef Plíhal was born on January 14, 1946 in Jáchymov. He had partly German roots, as his father Josef Plíhal Sr. came from a Czech-German marriage. After the occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938, he claimed Czech nationality and went to Prague. His siblings stayed in Jáchymov and claimed German nationality. The memorial’s uncle enlisted in the Wehrmacht and died in the first weeks of the Second World War on the front in Poland. His aunt Johanna was imprisoned and executed in a concentration camp by the Nazis for spreading information. After the pre-war and wartime experience, his father supported the Communists and joined the party, but he did not agree with the subsequent political development and eventually left the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. When the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops began in August 1968, Josef Plíhal wanted to defend himself militarily. In 1971, he married Eva Maříková, they had a son Josef and a daughter Marcela. His wife’s father was imprisoned by the communists, as a lawyer he helped political prisoners in trials. Josef Plíhal trained to be a machine fitter and spent most of his working life producing radiometry and dosimetry. When it finished, he worked briefly in a metal press. He retired in 2002 and was still living in Jáchymov in 2023.