Josef Vávra

* 1949

  • "My dad, I am learning about him a lot now when people are talking to me, he did a lot for the strangers, not for our family, but for the strangers whom he helped, whom he transferred, he was completely one hundred percent involved. And the family actually, we just suffered. Today, we can say, the result of it is, that he did a lot for people, for strangers, but for his own family he did not have enough. So, it kind of pays off on the family. I was also sorry that he didn't take me as a son, that the feeling wasn't there, I was feeling it. Then, I explained it to myself again. If you just don't live with the child, you're not in that contact, so that feeling doesn't form remotely. That's not it. That's about life, everything."

  • "In Prachatice, my boy went for an examination with bronchi and he caught salmonella there. We went there, we didn't know anything, my wife went there to visit him every other day or every day. He was there for a week, still a small child, two years old. He was looking forward to going home. Then they suddenly called us on Monday that he got salmonella, if we have a car, that we have to take him to Budějovice to the infectious dept. So, she called me to my work, for so long, instead of taking him by an ambulance there. I came home from work, I took my car, and I arrived here at three or half past three in the afternoon. And here they said, 'Well, man, the boy is drained of water, who gave it to you like that? Why didn´t they bring him here by themselves?' Well, I had the papers. He was already drained and he died there before the morning, here in Budějovice, the little boy, the two-year-old boy." - "What was his name?" - "Pepíček, Pepíček Vávra. So, my wife and I somehow survived that. And in half a year, now Věruška got to the hospital, a suspicion of an appendix, it was a working Saturday. They left her there, they wouldn't let her go home, that she might have an infected appendix, they gave her ice on it. My wife took her pajamas there. In the evening, around six o'clock, she stayed with her for an hour, then she had to go home, the nurses told her to. They hadn't let us stay there in the hospital back then yet. And imagine it was Saturday. And on Sunday morning they called us from Prachatice from the hospital, that they had to take the girl to the hospital in Budějovice at night, that she felt sick and began to urinate blood. Well, they transferred her and called us from Budějovice in two hours, at eleven, that the girl was dead."

  • “When I was still very little, we went to visit my grandmother at Pankrác, and already in the train people helped us with various things, and they even accompanied us to Pankrác. I went with my aunt, she was twelve or thirteen, she was my mother’s sister. We got up in the morning and walked about two hours to the train station in Husinec. Back then it wasn’t like it is nowadays, that you’ve got transport everywhere. Back then you walked everywhere, it was winter, and the snow was deep. I don’t remember much of the prison, only some hazy images of meeting with Grandma. That was my first memory in connection with prisons. My aunt was still little then, a child taking a child. That’s how it was back then, you forget that over time, actually. It’s getting better now, in my old age.”

  • "Does it matter to you today that you've had the life that complicated?" - " It happens to me sometimes when a person is at the bottom, so he wonders why did it have to be that way? It goes into a person's head unnecessarily, so it somehow cloudes the mind and it's not right. It is better if one has the head clear, with better experiences. It shows now when a person is older, I didn't have it before. As long as one lives a normal life, family life, and one is younger, there is some fun. You don't have the fun like that today; it is just talks from time to time. These thoughts come to an old man. It's not until certain years, you have a clear head. As a person begins to age, then it starts. I don't know how it will go on to keep it at least like this. Now the grandchildren will make me a little happy, so I can have happier thoughts. If I just think about this, I will go crazy from what they say. But that's not possible, if a person wants to live a while further, then the head has to be cleared a bit somewhere. It depends on the human psyche."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Dvory u Husince, 31.01.2014

    (audio)
    duration: 02:10:35
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    České Budějovice, 25.02.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:24:57
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 3

    České Budějovice, 12.06.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:50:55
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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We had a hard life because of our dad

Josef Vávra (1955)
Josef Vávra (1955)
photo: archive of the witness

Josef Vávra was born on January 16, 1949 in Prachatice as an illegitimate child. At that time, his father Josef Hasil was serving a prison sentence for transferring refugees to the West. In May 1949, he escaped from the prison and joined the US Secret Service. He later lived in the USA. Until the age of one, a witness grew up with his maternal grandparents, after the communists imprisoned them and their mother Maria Vávrová, they were taken in by their relatives from Volary. In 1953, her grandmother Anna Vávrová returned from prison and took Josef to the farm in the village Škarez. His mother Marie Vávrová got married and moved away, Josef stayed with his grandmother who raised him. The witness trained to be an electrician and graduated while already being employed. He worked in the field all his life. In 1968, Josef married Věra, née Turková. Two children, a daughter Věra and a son Josef, joined the family in a short time. Both died under unclear circumstances in the hospital. In 1974, the twins Petr and Pavel were born to Vávra family. The witness first met his father Josef Hasil in 1993. In 2020, Josef Vávra lived with his wife Věra in Dvory u Husince.