PaedDr. Colonel Antonín Strachota

* 1949

  • "Of course everything was written there, how they got involved, what happened, and so on, what they were advocating for. Those records were there, they were careful to make sure of that. Of course that was not like it was in the practice at the National Security Corps. I do not mean with the criminal service now, that was under the heading of the KSČ. Those men based everything on that, though they were intertwined with the regime, but they did not get their hands dirty. They honestly chased thieves, solved murders, drugs, the youth, etc. But those, who truly followed that and wrote down their records, damaged so many people! The organs of the National Security Corps were making things easier for themselves by expunging meetings. They went to a pub with someone they know, took some money - they had funds, I know that safely - and they wrote down record for some person, that they had negotiated with them, etc. Then, when the safes opened, they made up lots of things. But then again, nobody could be found, who would say: 'Be careful, that could have been artificially created.'"

  • "When the nationalization happened, father still headed the soda factory for some time. Until the year 1953 it was still with us. Simultaneously the second soda factory was also nationalized, Hrbáčkova, which was in Paseky, and the manufacturing was later moved there. With us, it was ironic, from the main manufacturing part - where there is the blackened glass, there was red cloth there, chairs were put - paradoxically it became an agitation center of the KSČ. Horrifying. After three years they realized, that it was stupid idea, and so they made this decision, and again resumed production. Production continued until the year 1961, then there was a repair shop for soda manufacturing machinery there, and from the year 1964 it was taken over in course of some delimitations, as was the norm, by the District Construction Company. Tinsmiths, electricians, plumbers, etc. In the year 1989, I managed to get the property back during restitution. The whole family, I got an eighth, but I had to pay back everyone gradually, and I got the property to its present state. Now I am not running production of soda waters, but it is serving. Because I did not have sufficient support in the family to restart production, then for now I am doing business in the form of the stupidest business, in the form of renting it out. As pertains to the development of my grandfather's life after the year 48, until the year 1953, father still headed the soda factory, after he absolutely did not identify with it. The whole family was still employed, and when father left it, the others basically left as well. The irony of fate is that of course grandfather had some debt for the soda machinery, and he was told, that basically he made the debt on his own, that despite the fact that they are nationalized, he will still have to finish paying it. And so grandfather gradually really did pay it back. Probably in the year 1966 or 1967 he finished paying for all of it and kept on working, because he was an honest working person, as hardworking as the whole family. Grandmother always told - and she quoted, without knowing it, that she was quoting Mr. President Masaryk - that our salvation lies in work and knowledge. That was basically her kind of creed, when we had some sort of discussion. Grandfather with father said, that systematic work leads us to results and it was interpreted like this."

  • "And then came the year 1939, the Germans. Grandfather had some problems. In the family there is gossip that one time the Gestapo came and had our uncle. There was some slapping involved. It was because the businessmen in Zlín basically supported the Jewish women who were imprisoned where the court is nowadays, back then it was a temporary prison. Those girls were imprisoned there and the businessmen from Zlín made finances available to them. Across the street there was a hotel, not a hotel, but the sweets shop Malota, that was the heart of Zlín, today it is the reconstructed Modus. They always played there, opened the windows. They also gave them some food, so that they would have an easier time in that prison environment. So that they could wait it out somehow. Well and then some good soul probably snitched, and that was the reaction of the Gestapo. The people who had somehow donated to it were threatened and the family was afraid, if grandfather would be sent somewhere. Fortunately nothing came of it, it somehow quietened down. They waited out the war and then dove fully back into doing business."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Zlín, 12.03.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:32:31
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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They nationalized our family soda factory, an agitation center of the KSČ was built in part of it

Antonín Strachota during filming for Paměť národa, Zlín, 12th of March 2022
Antonín Strachota during filming for Paměť národa, Zlín, 12th of March 2022
zdroj: Paměť národa

Antonín Strachota was born on the 21st of April 1949 in Gottwaldov, now Zlín, to Eva and Antonín Strachota. In 1918 his grandfather Otto Strachota, an important Moravian businessman, founded a soda factory in Staré Město near Uherské Hradiště. At the proposal of Tomáš Baťa the company was moved to Zlín in the year 1929, in the year 1937 it was expanded by a worksite in Otrokovice. In the year 1948 the soda factory was nationalized, the family members kept working there until the year 1953. Antonín Strachota had problems with his applications to middle schools due to his cadre profile. In the end he graduated from a general pedagogic middle school in Gottwaldov in the year 1967. He took part in a demonstration against the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in Brno. In the years 1970–1974 he studied at the Pedagogical Faculty of Univerzita Palackého in Olomouc. After university he spent a year doing substitute military service, he served as the commander of a platoon. In the year 1975 he married Dagmar Kopečková, later they had two children together. In the year 1982 he successfully defended his rigorous thesis at the Pedagogical Institute of J. A. Komenský of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. That same year he became a member of the Communsit Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and started attending a police school in Holešov, which he headed after the Velvet Revolution. In the year 2012 he went into retirement, but still worked as a teacher. In the year 2022, at the time of filming, he lived in Zlín.