They wanted to make it impossible for him to find the right place in life
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Karel Halml was born on 1 March 1937 in Malý Bor near Horažďovice. His parents Karel Halml and Marie Halmlová had a little farm and Karel and his sister helped them with it. He spent the Second World War as well as the liberation by the American Army in the area of Horažďovice. In May 1945, his family hosted Rostislav Bayer, a soldier who returned from the Western front and who was not allowed by the international conventions to cross the demarcation line like the other soldiers who had fought in the west in the Foreign Legion. Karel Halml later exchanged letters with him. After 1948, the Halml family faced the pressure of the communist regime because they did not want to join the agricultural cooperative. Karel Halml could not start to study to become an electrician because of that. He solved his situation by running away from Malý Bor to a farm in Hluboká nad Vltavou in 1953. Mrs. Kubátová, who employed him at that time, wrote a letter to the President´s Office and he was in the end admitted to the apprenticeship. He trained to become an electrical mechanic in the Škoda company (the then V. I. Lenin plants) in Pilsen and he subsequently worked in Horažďovice in a construction company. He spent his military service in Český Krumlov and České Budějovice. He got married to Emílie Hlaváčová in 1959 and they had a daughter Marie. He started to work as a maintenance worker in local barracks at the end of the 1960s. His wife became ill and died at the beginning of the 1970s and Karel Halml got married for the second time to Věra Zimmerman in 1974. He adopted her son Roman. He has been a practising Catholic all his life. He also served in the volunteer fire department. After 1989, he started to be more interested in history and he helped Josef Chalupský publish his book II. světová válka na Horažďovicku (WWII in the area of Horažďovice, 2015). At the time of the interview in the spring of 2022 he lived in a retirement house in Horažďovice, he was interested in social events and he still enjoyed visiting the church services in the local church.
