Josef Kaše

* 1938

  • "I was a bit puzzled. Because when I was working as an apprentice in my third year, I was given a complete set of equipment at Škoda, that is: an electrician's tester, a knife, screwdrivers, and pliers. And when I started at Zbrojovka [Armaments Factory, transl.], I went to the foreman's office, and he said, 'You go to the dispensary, and she'll give you some screwdrivers and pliers.' And I said, 'Foreman, but I need a tester, a vadaska, wire cutters...' And he said, 'What do you need? What do you need it for? A tester, you tell your colleague, he gives you two sockets, and you connect them. You put the bulbs in, and that's the testers. That's what everybody's got here. There's only one person here who has a vadaska [solenoid voltmeter, transl.].' Vadaska was an old electrician's tester, like a little cylinder, and when you tested with it, it would pop a little. - 'And the knife? Well, you go to the sawmill, find a broken saw, sharpen it, and make a knife.' So it disappointed me a little. As I said, the electricians at Škoda were - I have to say it straight out - on a higher level than at Zbrojovka."

  • "There was one machine I must tell you about, but it did not come from the West, but from the Soviet Union - a press machine for cutting round plates up to a thickness of about five millimetres. It was at least 40 centimetres in diameter - a big, heavy press that shook the whole building when it cut the sheet metal. And because there was a regulation that if Western machines came in, or even those from Russia, they had to do a so-called attestation to see if it met the safety regulations according to our conditions. And the press came in, and there were no security features at all. Presses are terribly dangerous machines because you must put your hands in there. And when it came in, the inspector banned it. And it meant trouble that a Soviet machine came in, and they wouldn't let it run. There was one guy like that, he was the foreman, he only had one leg, the other one was wooden, and he was a big party liner. We went to fix it, and he wouldn't let us do it, saying that it was a Soviet machine and he wouldn't let us work on it. So he wouldn't let us do it, but in the end, we had to do it anyway. And he went and complained to the Party Chairman and said we were going to kneel and beg, that he wanted to save a Soviet machine. He went to complain, but we didn't have to go anywhere."

  • "Somehow, they suddenly appeared there. You know, I was very young. And we used to go to them for chocolate and chewing gum. They stayed in the brush factory. They stayed there, and they even had an airfield in the meadow. And there, as they were staying there and cooking, we would come to them as kids and: gum, chocolate."

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    Brno, 08.02.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:47:09
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The Armaments Factory was sold off and stolen off, mainly stolen off

Josef Kaše (1970s)
Josef Kaše (1970s)
zdroj: Witness archive

Josef Kaše was born on 16 October 1938 in Koloveč, Domažlice. His father, Jan, ran his own pottery business, and his mother, Marie, took care of the small family farm and household. Josef remembers the bombing of Pilsen, fifty kilometres away, and the arrival of the American army. In the nineteen-fifties, he graduated from the Vocational School of State Labour Reserves (OUSPZ) on the premises of the Plzeň Škoda Works (then called Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Works), where he started working after his apprenticeship. During his compulsory military service in Brno (1957 to 1959), he met his future wife Dagmar, whom he moved to after leaving for civilian life. In Brno, he began to work at the Armaments Factory (Zbrojovka). He stayed there for almost forty years until his retirement at the end of the nineteen-nineties. From his position as an electrician, he was in charge of the so-called technical operation of production (TOV) at the Armaments Factory. Around 1980, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) under pressure. After the Velvet Revolution, he changed jobs within the Armaments Factory and worked in boiler maintenance until his retirement. In 2023, Josef Kaše was living in Brno.