We just wanted this world to start behaving sensibly and humanely
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Jiří Procházka was born on 30 November 1933 in Sušice, Šumava, to father František, who worked as manager of a shoe shop for the Baťa company, and his mother Marie, who was a housewife. The family moved frequently. During the war, his father worked for the Baťa company in Berlin. Here the family experienced the first air raids, and he also recalls the terrifying experience of the raid on Zlín. At the end of 1945, his father was taken away by the Gestapo and imprisoned in a concentration camp until the end of the war. He trained as an electrical engineer and later studied at the secondary technical school. He completed two years of military service. Under pressure, he signed a two-year prolongation. After the nationalisation of Baťa’s factories, his father was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1953. He had to leave his job as a manager and joined the shoe factory as a labourer. Jiří Procházka worked at the factory as an electrical fitter. In 1965, he was sent with other colleagues to Sapele, Nigeria, where they spent eight months reconstructing outdated machinery in the shoe factory and setting up a new production line. In January 1966, a military coup took place in Nigeria and the cooperation with Nigeria ended. The witness studied at the Brno University of Electrical Engineering by distance learning and graduated as an electrical engineer in 1971. He went on to work in Svit as head of the Property Administration. In 1989 he became an activist of the Civic Forum. He took early retirement and helped his son Jiří with his business until late in life. At the time of filming in March 2025, Jiří Procházka was living in Zlín.
