I like a job well done.
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Jiří Fassmann was born on 6 February 1926 in Otvovice. His father and grandfather both worked in a glass factory, and he himself began to apprentice as a fine mechanic in Prague after graduating from the municipal school. After a year he transferred to a secondary industrial school. At the end of the war he was forced to join the Technische Nothilfe and worked on the tunnel excavation near Německý (today Havlíčkův) Brod. After the war he graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Czech Technical University and in 1951 he joined ČKD as a technician, where he spent his entire professional life. As a developer and designer, he participated in the development of tractors and engines for locomotives. In 1958, he married his wife Jaromíra, by whose side he spent 65 years, and they moved to Strančice in Central Bohemia. In 1964, he was on a tour of duty in Iraq for several months, where ČKD supplied locomotives. With the coming political liberation in 1967, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but left the party after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. Thanks to his expertise, he did not have to worry about his job. He remained active as an engineer into old age.
