Josef Nový

* 1938

  • “As children we used to watch air raids of Spitfires on German colonies during the war. We would pick up the shells after them and prepare some toy-like guns as small boys. That’s how we played. I remember that in Zdice, there were steam locomotives pulled up and the air raids focused on them. As soon as the shot hit the furnace armor, the steam vapored greatly. This has been quite fixed in my memory.”

  • “I already went to school at the time, when the Russians were in Zdice. We had a bigger yard; thus, they parked their GAZ vehicle there. I remember there was a cherry tree and they brought such a bigger baby bath tub, filled it with cherries and drank beer, which they tapped in a pub into rinsed gas canisters. So, they ate those cherries and washed down with beer. They never fell sick! This is what I remember. And then from Pilsen there were Americans approaching on their jeeps, which were also parked in our yard. As souvenirs they left us some cans, so-called UNRRA, comprising e.g. meat or matches, etc. We had plenty of those and when we used to go camping as youngsters later on, we would still use them. They also gave me a big machete that my sister preserves somewhere.”

  • “I made a great mistake by trying to take pictures. If I had taken them normally, nothing would have probably happened, but there were such ladies; one of them stretched her arm and I took the pictures over it. Of course, the Russians were watching us through binoculars and everything was lost. They came to take me and brought me to their headquarters. However, I was really lucky back then, since I knew the commander-in-chief of their unit. A year ago, they gathered there for a military training within the Warsaw Pact troops. He was quite surprised and it was a great coincidence. His adjutant, or whoever it was, took the film out of my camera, exposed it and I didn’t have anything. He walked back and forth and I always had to show him something, since we knew each other. He called me Pipi, as Pepo, and told me not to return there anymore.”

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    Žilina, Slovensko, 14.07.2018

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Worship the mountains, but stay downhill

In youth
In youth
zdroj: archív pamätníka

Josef Nový was born on February 3, 1938 in the village of Zdice between Prague and Pilsen. In 1960 thanks to flying on engineless planes he reached the Žilina airport in Dolný Hričov and began to work here as an avionics technician. He devoted his free time to photography. Since 1960s he has documented and taken pictures of how the Žilina city transformed in the course of time. As a Czech citizen living in Slovakia, he managed to document the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops and the events of August 21, 1968 in Žilina. For long years, Josef had his film materials hidden in the cellar in a vacuum cleaner tube, and his pictures could only come to light many years later, after the fall of the communist regime and after the “brotherly” troops left the country. Until leaving to retirement he was an employee of the Air Transport Department at the recent University of Žilina. He lives in Žilina.