Ing. Josef Kaše

* 1944

  • "After a year [of the military service], I returned [back to work at the Institute of Technical Supervision]. The old man [the director] was no longer there. There was a new director, new management of the company, and things went well, as they say. Because he was already a member of the Regional Committee of the [Communist] Party. And in 1972 the reviews came, [when we were asked about] what our opinion was regarding the entry of [Warsaw Pact] troops and everything that happened. [They also asked me] why I actually go to the rectory and how bad things are in Vatican... This is how the director, who was a member of the Regional Committee of the [Communist] Party, tested me! That was a test of whether I was a believer or not. So, we said goodbye very quickly. I didn't even wait to be fired. I immediately left and joined a company that was very happy to take me on. They dealt with elevators. I worked as an elevator inspector for eighteen years because it was written in my papers that I could not do any management function. The director told me in Prague: 'If you don't join ROH (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement), if you don't join the Union of Friends of the USSR in Czechoslovakia, the Scientific and Technical Society, ... He named these organizations. He always asked me about it and I always told him: 'Mr. Pribík, I don't want to.' And he: 'Well, if you don't want to, you can't do anything like that.' And when I asked what I was supposed to going to do, he said I was going to be an inspector. 'You will go and do inspections.' And I told him: 'Mr. Pribík, I'm waiting for that.' So, I went to do inspections. I was in charge, I traveled around the country. And I did very well, because thanks to this I was often away from home, so I managed to escape the interrogations of State Security, as I was in their viewfinder.

  • "I was looking forward to being a teacher because my favorite subjects were history, geography and the Czech language. That's what I was obsessed with, that's what I was interested in. I was not interested in those technical things, which were not much in primary school. However, I learned that this will not work. Then such a struggle began, the Way of the Cross, because my mother and I were invited to the Labor Department. In front of the window there was a Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union member, asking what we want. Mom said she was summoned. And he said straight away: 'The boy has to leave home.' And mom says, 'You're not serious, he's so wild...' And he says, "Well, we'll tame him. He will go to Ostrava, he will become a miner!' Then my mother: 'You're not serious, he's studying well.' And he: 'We need people like that there.' The conversation continued until the moment when my mother said: 'Well, at least he could go to Škoda to learn, right?' He shouted: 'There is no Skoda!' And my mother said: 'That's strange, workers commute there from our place every morning... I see them at the station.' And he: 'That's the Races of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin! Mom: 'I've never heard that...' That was the end. He rolled down the window and kicked us out."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Plzeň, 03.02.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 02:37:32
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I didn‘t want to be in a party. I needed my hands free to share life with people

Josef Kaše in his youth
Josef Kaše in his youth
zdroj: archive of the witness

Josef Kaše was born on September 29, 1944 into a Catholic family in Močerady in Domažlice area. He also spent the last year of World War II there. They then moved to nearby Staňkov, where Josef attended elementary school. Due to the practice of the Christian faith, he could not continue his studies in 1958. He refused to join Pionýr and the Socialist Youth Union. He trained as an electrician in Škodovka in Pilsen and entered a technical school. In 1967 he moved to Pilsen. The big turning point came when in 1969 he participated in the camps of the American Christian organization Young Life in Austria and Norway, which opened his eyes. He wished to organize a similar event in Czechoslovakia. He graduated in September 1969 and after a month started working at the Institute of Technical Supervision. After background checks in 1972, he was fired from his job, mainly because of his Christian beliefs. He worked as an elevator inspection technician for eighteen years. He organized traveling camps and regular meetings of young people not only with spiritual themes, these events were a kind of light in the gray of normalization. As a result of these activities, he did not escape the interrogations of State Security. On September 6, 1980, he married Ilona Nevláčilová, together they raised four sons, whom they led to the Christian faith. In January 1990, Josef Kaše and his colleague founded a prosperous company for the assembly and revision of elevators. In 1992, he began to devote himself to the faithful in the parishes. Eight years later, the family moved to Chotíkov to the rectory. Josef Kaše became a member of the pastoral council of the diocese of the Pilsen bishopric. On November 17, 2018 he received the Honorary Plaque of the Governor of the Pilsen Region for his courageous civic attitudes.