"Now we were approaching the fateful day of October 23, 1941, when the Gestapo first broke into our house. They wanted to arrest my father, but he was not at home. And he was probably in an illegal meeting. So the police car left, but came again the next day. And when Daddy came home and found out what had happened, it was clear to him that there had been some disclosure of the activity and what would follow, and they arrived the next day, the Gestapo. But the Gestapo first broke into our apartment, so I, as a boy, remember it well, even though I was... at the time when I was six, my Gestapo drove us and my mother into a corner and now throw everything out of the drawers. But they didn't find anything so incriminating, so they left. They confiscated some flags, a radio camera, some books and a car. They acted like robbers normally, didn't they. He could only say goodbye briefly and they took him in. We then saw... we were looking out of the window as they left our house, there a black car stood outside, we got on and left. I later found out that the Gestapo had no idea that when they left our apartment, they had to take the stairs from the first floor. And the staircase was covered, and weapons were placed between the roof and the ceiling."
"Indeed, the situation became so dangerous that it eventually led to the fact that our family basically had to flee from Melč. Well, and we moved to parents in Závišice. But the very next day, when they arrived, the radio announced that this area will also be a part of into the Sudetenland and that it will be occupied, so another move followed, as we moved to Valašské Meziříčí, where it was not possible to get accommodation. At Mr. Hivnar's favor, we were able to live in his garage while we were there. That shows how dramatic the circumstances were, and the situation eventually led to my father receiving a decree to the position of director in Pňovice, a village not far from Litovel, a little further from Olomouc. And there it was that after the occupation of the Sudetenland, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was declared, and at that moment it was that progressive Czech citizens saw the need to defend the republic, or otherwise be totally overwhelmed by the German element. So Dad joined the illegal activity in resistance. It was very difficult for him, because he came to a new environment where he did not know people, where he met only a few teachers in that school. But he did get involved in the work. And I was trying to get some more information in this area. But the people who worked with him, whose names I know, were all executed in concentration camps. So it was no longer possible to have any personal contact with them."
Vlastimil Novobilský was born on February 15, 1935 in Melč near Opava. His father Jaroslav Novobilský was a teacher and later the director of a local school, in 1936 he achieved the construction of a new modern Czech school building in Melč, where the German-speaking population predominated at the time. Ethnic relations intensified during the Munich crisis and the family took refuge in Závišice, the father‘s birthplace, and then in Valašské Meziříčí. They spent the war years in the village of Pňovice near Litovel. Here his father Jaroslav Novobilský joined the illegal resistence as a member of the Nová cesta 39 group. Vlastimil recalls the death march that Pňovice went through in February 1945. After the war, the family moved to Opava, Vlastimil graduated from high school, then the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague. He devoted his whole life to Esperanto, and in the 1960s he was monitored by the state police due to international contacts between Esperantists. He moved to Ústí nad Labem and after 1989 he became the dean of the local Pedagogical faculty; in the years 1995 - 2001 he worked as the rector of the newly established Jan Evangelista Purkyně University. Vlastimil Novobilský died on 11 February 2021.
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