Josef Vojáček

* 1928

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In 1948, I joined the Communist Party out of conviction

Josef Vojáček in 2012
Josef Vojáček in 2012
photo: ÚSTR

Josef Vojáček was born on 13 November 1928 in Světlá nad Sázavou. His parents moved frequently, as his father was a farm manager. During the First Republic, they lived on the Moravian side of the Highlands and in Bohemia. His father worked mostly on farms belonging to Jewish owners. During the war he worked on the Nové Dvory estate, where until 1942 Jews who had been promised permission by the Nazis to go to Palestine if they learned agriculture skills. However, the vast majority of them ended up in concentration camps. Josef Vojáček graduated from the town school in Rouchovany and in 1943 began studying at the Higher Industrial School of Construction in Brno, where he experienced bombing and aerial bombing of civilian trains. In order to avoid digging trenches around Brno, he interrupted his studies and took a job as an auxiliary worker in the distillery in Boříkovice, where he survived the end of the war. He graduated from school in 1948. As an active member of the Czechoslovak Youth Union, he joined the ranks of the Communist Party out of belief in the social justice of the new regime. At that time, he joined the Czechoslovak Construction Works in Havlíčkův Brod as a professional worker. From 1950 to 1952, he completed his basic military service in Pardubice. As a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, he underwent a short ideological training and became a politruk of a company of radio operators, leaving the military with the rank of lieutenant. After returning to civilian life, he worked at construction plants until 1960. After the reorganisation of the enterprise, he held the post of head of the district investor’s department, in which he remained until 1988, when he retired. He disagreed internally with the invasion in August 1968, but remained in the Communist Party, after which he underwent vetting. Even after the fall of totalitarianism, Josef Vojáček retained the conviction that the communist regime was better than the democratic system of the Czech Republic. As a pensioner, he took care of the agitation box of the Left Bloc in Havlíčkův Brod for a long time after November 1989.