"In Ústí nad Labem it had a specific parameter. Which I remember quite well because I was there when a lot of this was discussed. At that time, the regional committee of the Communist Party called out the People's Militia in full field with live ammunition. They actually called up the militia from the Fuel Combine, which were miners from the shafts. And they rebelled, they refused to join the demonstration. On the contrary, they threatened that if they took up arms, they would take on the other side, right. So their statement at that time was important for Ústí nad Labem, and I think it was also important nationally, because it led, of course, to the rapid disintegration of the People's Militia, as a para-military communist army, which was really a big threat that if it could be mobilized and deployed, that there could be some bloodshed."
"I joined in the autumn of 1983, a period when the situation in Europe was tense. The Americans were deploying Pershing medium-range missiles. The Soviet Union was deploying SS-20 medium-range missiles in our country, and we really had a permanent military alert on that missile force. We were sleeping in our boots, we had alarms all the time, and one time they really put us on high alert when they were practicing mobilization right now. They were practicing the deployment of mobilization centers. And so on that occasion, I was designated as the first scribe of the back detachment, so I was tasked with filling out our staff with freshly mobilized soldiers. That exercise was really surprising even for the career soldiers, it was like a shock. It took quite a while to find out that it wasn't a real war and a real mobilization, but we actually had trucks come in loaded with people that we were outfitting and resupplying."
"My family was really quite active in the Czech resistance during the war, and of course the German part of the family received orders to join the Wehrmacht. So one of the stories that I have from my grandfather, who told me, was when my dad was about to go to the municipal school in 1941. My grandfather was Czech, my grandmother was German, and they lived in Hodolany, which was a Czech town near Olomouc. Today it's part of Olomouc. Dad was enrolled in a Czech municipal school. Then the police came for my grandfather because they were denounced for de-nationalising Germans. So they told my grandmother that they would return my grandfather to her only after she had transferred my father to a German municipal school, which my grandmother did. And they did indeed return her grandfather to her, saying that in May 1945 they had come for my grandmother for de-nationalising the Czechs, and they put her in an internment camp in Olomouc. And she was taken out of the camp by her cousin who was returning with Svoboda's army looking for his relatives. He took a submachine gun, and when he heard that my grandmother was in the internment camp, a couple of his friends went to the camp and got my grandmother out of there."
Václav Houfek was born on 6 October 1963 in Bruntál into a family of a doctor and a nurse. His parents were involved in the revival process of the Communist Party at the beginning of 1968, but after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops, the social situation and the situation of the family itself deteriorated sharply. His parents lost their jobs, were expelled from the party and moved from Česká Lípa to Ústí nad Labem, where his father, a doctor with three certificates, was able to find a decent job. When Václav Houfek was twelve years old, his mother died and his father remarried. From a young age he was a thoughtful boy, he liked to read, was interested in history, astronomy and admired cosmonautics. From the age of fifteen, he went to schools to lecture about space. Because of his not very flattering academic record, the then-normalization director of the Jateční grammar school in Ústí nad Labem refused to give him a recommendation to study at Charles University, majoring in history. The only university for which he was recommended was the University of Mining in Ostrava. Václav Houfek lasted one semester at the technically demanding studies in Ostrava, then he left them at his own request. At the beginning of 1983, before the draft order came, he worked for a few months as a librarian at the North Bohemian Scientific Library in Ústí nad Labem, where he returned after the war. After a year he joined the Museum of the City of Ústí nad Labem as a curator of collections. In 1987 he began studying history at Charles University in Prague. Since 1993 he was the head of the local library, the history department of the museum and the scientific secretary. In 2015 he became the director of the museum. Just after the Velvet Revolution, he participated in the revival of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party and served two terms on the city council. He teaches as an external lecturer at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem and is an elected member of the management of the Association of Museums and Galleries. In 2023 he lived in Chlumec near Ústí nad Labem.
