We didn‘t fire people
Stáhnout obrázek
Oldřich Holý was born on 5 June 1939 in Beroun. His father, also Oldřich, trained as a gamekeeper in Písek. His mother Františka, née Nováková, came from the Pelhřimov region. After the declaration of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the family moved to Prague, where Dad got a job in an insurance company. He thus avoided total deployment in the Reich. Thus, he spent his early childhood in Prague. He experienced the bombing, remembers the end of the war and the enthusiastic welcome of the Red Army. Shortly afterwards, his father was offered a job in a factory in Oloví. Thus, the family found itself in the post-war border area as early as December 1945. People streamed across the border, many being forced to leave, many coming with the vision of securing some elementary human existence, others coming with the enthusiasm to build a better world. Oldřich Holý grew up in Oloví with friends from German families, who were gradually expelled until 1968, among the children of re-migrants from France, Russia and Hungary. The diverse mix was complemented by children of new settlers from all corners of Bohemia. At his father‘s request, he went to the violin-making apprenticeship in Luby near Cheb. The smell of wood and the atmosphere in the town, life among the old master violin makers and work in Cremona became his destiny. His whole life was linked to the factory, which in its best days exported master instruments all over the world. He worked his way up through the ranks and in 1990 he and his colleagues privatised the company. At the time of recording in 2025, Oldřich Holý lived in Luby.
