Josef Vlasák

* 1934

  • "I've been through two dictatorships. What do you want from me? During the Reich, the drill was like... It wasn't as much about education as it was about making soldiers out of us. But what was it like in the Pioneer? If you looked at them... and I saw them marching through Znojmo with drums again, with flags and ribbons, with all this bullshit - it's the same thing! Nothing has changed there."

  • "Why my parents were not deported? Look, we were an old social-democratic family. Both my dad and my uncle used to go to these German villages, screening films and explaining to people that Hitler - that he was a bad choice. They would chase them away of course. Quite often they had to run away. You know, my uncle - who ran for the Senate as a German Social Democrat - when the Germans came afterwards, they made him to clean the pavement in the Upper Square with a toothbrush."

  • "Red Army, please, I see it as today - they came on the eighth [of May 1945]. There was one, a hard left-wing Social Democrat, so he put on his Sunday clothes and went to greet the Russians. And he had a watch. I didn't see him when he went there, but when he went back, the pocket where he had the watch was torn off. So I guess he didn't go to greet anyone after that."

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I have no nationality. I‘m from Znojmo

Josef Vlasák
Josef Vlasák
zdroj: archive of the witness

Josef Vlasák was born on 30 December 1934 in Znojmo to parents Františka Leiterová and Josef Vlasák. Both of them were German before the war, so his father had to enlist in the Wehrmacht in 1940, even though he was an active anti-fascist. He survived the war and thanks to his political views the family avoided post-war deportation. Josef trained as a turner and after two years of military service he graduated from the evening industrial school, graduating in 1963. For the next 33 years he worked as a production technologist at the Sklostroj company. His lifelong hobby was photography, for which he was investigated by military counter-intelligence, which suspected him of espionage. Josef Vlasák created an extensive collection of historical photographs of Znojmo, organised exhibitions and lectures and founded the Club of Friends of Znojmo. In 2015, he was awarded honorary citizenship of Znojmo for his lifelong work in documentary photography. In 2020, the book Beloved Znojmo, which he co-authored, was published.