The members of Sokol do not give up so easily
František Černický was born April 7, 1924 in Mělník as the youngest of three siblings. His father Josef was wounded in WWI and he remained handicapped. He moved from Prague to Melnik with his brother Fredinand, and there they set up a typography workshop. Ferdinand was the leader of the local Sokol sports organization and the whole family was actively involved in Sokol as well as in the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. Around six hundred refugees came to Mělník after the German takeover of the Czech border regions. František’s father and uncle were carrying out their resistance activities together with some of them. They were mainly providing financial support and food to families whose members were arrested by the Nazis, and later they were helping the paratroopers as well. František’s father was arrested on April 14, 1942 and his brother Ferdinand on July 15 of the same year. He and his family perished in a concentration camp. František Černický avoided forced labour in Germany because he had symptoms of tuberculosis, but he had to work in an aircraft factory and at the same time manage the family’s typographic business so that their employees would not have to be ordered to do forced labour. After the war he worked in railroad construction in Prague and he was active in amateur theatre. František Černický spent his retirement in Mělník where he died on April 6, 2013.