“Back then every factory had to work for the Wehrmacht. So the soldiers came to my dad and ordered the glass factory to make armour glass for armoured vehicles. Dad got an assignment to start making it. I can vividly remember the talks, they didn’t take place only in the factory, but the soldiers and Gestapo officers came to our home as well. They tried all sorts of tricks to persuade Dad. Of course, Dad resisted them. I remember that once when they were leaving, one of them took Dad by the throat, pressed a gun against his head and said that if the armour glass isn’t ready by the next time they come, he will shoot him. I had to watch this as a little boy.”
“I came to the room and heard somebody shout: ‘Send the Trutnov group there, it has 20 people, they’ll calm things down and sort it out.’ A museum worker wouldn’t talk like that. I opened the door, and there at the desk with a phone in his hand was a complete stranger, giving these kind of instructions to someone. I said: ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘We arranged it with Comrade Flégl,’ who was my subordinate in charge of the museum, ‘we established a dispatch centre here for the Party and government to sort out these protests in the villages around Krkonoše.’ Again, without approval from the director, the museum manager, who was a firebrand Communist, made the deal just by himself. I had had enough, this was the third or fourth day after the invasion, so I took his key, walked him out of the room, and locked the door. And I messed up their dispatch. There were no mobile phones back then. So their security measures were in shambles for I don’t know how long. So they really couldn’t want me even as a boilerman any more.”
“Václav Havel was a complicated person. As a politician he was an amateur. It wasn’t easy for him to deal with all the things that he was confronted with after the revolution. There were many extraordinary issues he didn’t know how to solve. He had to rely on the advice of others. Some of it was good, some of it was bad. His position was far from enviable. But I think he had character. He probably grew up in similar conditions to what I knew something about. And he wasn’t able to tie a knot on his spine. So his position wasn’t easy at all. And the people who spread all kinds of nonsense about him, as you can find on all sorts of websites – I don’t follow them but sometimes I come across them – these people are unable to comprehend his moral profile. I’m glad there have been things published about this lately. He was a remarkable person. Of course, on many occasions he couldn’t do things differently. In the end, after the revolution, he had to make a deal with Adamec. I highly respected Havel as a philosopher and as a politically moral man. I am sorry that Czech people do not respect him in the same way. That is quite telling - not of Havel, but of Czech people. It’s a pity.”
“In 1969 I was supposed to defend my dissertation against my former teachers. I had to take time off for that. So I requested a day or two of vacation. I had to state the purpose [of the vacation], so I wrote that was going to defend my dissertation. So I got two days off, went to Kostelec and defended the dissertation with honours. Later I found out that immediately after my manager approved my vacation, he wrote to the director of the institute where I was to defend the thesis, Professor Douda, claiming that I must not to be admitted to the defence. Professor Douda showed character. When the secretary brought him the letter, he asked: ‘Have you recorded it in the list of received mail?’ ‘Not yet.’ ‘Then give it to me and write it down after Fanta’s graduation. It’s stuck at the post office.’ When I came back and the director asked me how it went, he pulled such a face - how was it possible!”
Josef Fanta was born on 3 July 1931 in Kolín to Václav and Františka Fanta. He grew up with an older brother and a younger sister, his father was the manager of a glass factory and his mother took care of the household. His father was active in the anti-Nazi resistance and Josef was present during visits of the Gestapo. After the war Josef graduated at the Faculty of Forestry of the Czech Technical University and worked at a research institute in Opočno. He helped establish the Krkonoše Mountains National Park and became a deputy director there. After the invasion of the armies of the Warsaw Pact he had to take up the position of a museum caretaker. In 1973 he moved to Prague, where he could not find a job. He decided to emigrate, and in 1977 he managed to collect all the necessary documents to travel to the Netherlands. He lived there for 33 years. He worked as a researcher in the Institute for Forestry and Nature Research in Wageningen and became Professor of Landscape Ecology at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of Wageningen. He moved back to the Czech Republic in 2010, mainly for family reasons. Since he started working at the national park those many years ago, Josef has published a long list of expert publications, he has received numerous awards and continues to work with a number of institutes including the Council for Sustainable Development of the Government of the Czech Republic.
