You have to keep your honor yourself and no regime can take it away from you
Josef Vopařil was born on November 13, 1936 in Makov in eastern Bohemia as a second-born son. The Vopařil family farmed 15 hectares of fields and was among the three largest estates in the village. In 1944, Josef’s father died, and all the work was left to mother Anna and her two young sons. The end of the war caught Josef when he was eight years old, he remembers the actions of the partisans who were hiding in Makov and neighboring Vidlatá Seč for the last months. The brothers would continue to manage the family farm even after the war, but their plans were thwarted by forced collectivization. After basic military service, the younger Josef did not return to Makov, where he would have had to join the JZD, and preferred to go to work in Štětí and later in Svitavy. He got married in 1968 and they had two daughters. He returned to farming only after the coup in the early nineties. Together with his brother, he got back the land in restitution, which he and his younger daughter Věra manage after his brother’s death.