In August 1968 he went with his camera to the streets of Letohrad
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František Stejskal was born on February 23, 1937 in Lukavica near Letohrad. Father Emanuel Stejskal (1908-1977) came from Lukavice, mother Růžena (1902-1988) from Letohrad. The family lived in poverty, they rented a cottage in Lukavice and there František and his brother Josef (1935) had sisters Růžena (1939), Anežka (1941) and Marie (1943). Their father worked as a labourer and in July 1945 they moved to a guard house in the border town of Mladkov. Many of the original German inhabitants had already left by then, others were yet to be removed. He had friends among them as a boy. He ministered to the parish priest Demuth, who also spoke Czech. During the 1948 elections, his father threw a white ballot paper into the ballot box and became a reactionary. František was unable to study at the school in Letohrad, so in 1952 he went to the industrial building school in Hradec Králové. There, without asking, the students were immediately given an application form for two political organisations. In 1955 František Stejskal trained at the first Spartakiad. After the war he joined the District Construction Company in Žamberk, where he worked all his professional life. In 1961 he married Růžena Skalická (1937-2018), they settled in Letohrad and in 1962, 1964 and 1966 they had three children. On August 21, 1968, he took several interesting pictures of signs in the streets of Letohrad, which were used by citizens to show their opposition to the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops. At work, they had established a partnership with the Soviet garrison in Klášterec nad Orlicí - the soldiers were helping to build a pig farm. In September 1989, the witness saw thousands of refugees from East Germany occupying the embassy in Prague, demanding freedom and travel to the West. In 2024, at the time of filming, he was still living in Letohrad.
