The life of a Czech miner from Bígr
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Václav Fořt was born on 31 August 1944 in the Czech village of Bígr in Romania. His great-grandfather Josef came to the Banat region with the wave of Czech settlers. His uncle, Jan Fořt, re-emigrated with his family back to Czechoslovakia after the Second World War and attempted to cross the border illegally to the West in the 1960s. From 1950 to 1954, Václav attended school in Bígr, and later in Berzáska. He helped his family with work in the fields and on the farm. In 1961 he started working in a coal mine, first as a wagon driver and later as a miner, mine blaster and, before retiring in 1989, as a safety technician. He married Stefanie Rohová in 1963 and was living in Bígr at the time of filming (2019). Václav Fořt died in 2021.
