All my life, I’ve have been saying no to communism
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Antonín Tomešek was born on 22 November 1943 in the small town of Vracov in South Moravia near Kyjov. He had three siblings. His mother, Alžběta was a housewife, later she worked in a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD) and a wine cooperative, father Antonín was employed as a railwayman. As a child, he experienced the liberation of Vracov - and although he was less than two years old, he has memories of a grenade explosion near their house. After the war, he and his friends accidentally discovered a German bunker with the remains of soldiers and ammunition. After 1948, his parents joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia - his father, a hunter, was not allowed to own a gun without membership. He left the party in the 1960s. Antonín Tomešek was a lifelong non-party member. In his adolescence and youth he danced in the Vracov song and dance group, with which he participated in competitions and social events, and devoted himself to hunting. Paradoxically, he was unable to study at his dream high school because of his father’s membership in the Communist Party - the headmaster was a People’s Party member. He trained as a locksmith. He worked in the Kyjov screw factory, later under the Průmyslové stavby Gottwaldov company, as a machinist in the Kovo Bzenec company or as a watchman in the Textil Ostrava company in Šternberk. He was married three times and raised two children with his first wife. In 1987, he moved to Šternberk, where he participated in the revolutionary events of 1989 and was a member of the OF. He lived there at the time of the interview in 2025.
