During the displacement of the Sudetenland, the Zachs were allowed to stay in Slavonice because of their work qualifications
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Jan Zach was born on 10 May 1942 in Slavonice. Both parents were Germans. His father worked as a mechanical engineer and died in Belarus during the war. During the post-war displacement of the Sudetenland, the Zach family was allowed to stay in Slavonice together with about five other German families, because it was necessary to keep the local textile factory running, where Jan Zach’s mother worked in the export department. Because Jan Zach did not speak Czech, he was sent to a “re-education” school near Buchlov for a year after the war in 1947. After that, he started primary school in Slavonice and then commuted to Dačice for secondary school. In the 1950s, he helped a local gravedigger bury victims of the mined border, mainly Polish civilians who were trying to flee to Austria. As a relative, he was able to go to the West regularly for holidays in the 1960s. From 1965 to 1980, he lived in České Budějovice. He worked as an electrical engineer, and after the revolution in 1989, as a translator and interpreter. He had to move out of Slavonice, where he returned after 2000, because he had lost a court case over a decree for an apartment. He settled in a sublet in Pavlice.
