Trust in God
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Ivan Ježek was born in 1936 in Pilsen. His father, professor Vojtěch Ježek, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for his activity in the resistance movement and on April 13, 1945 he was executed in Leipzig. Ivan lived with his mother and brothers in Zahrádka near Nepomuk and he attended the elementary school in Čížkov. The family and their grandparents, whose house had been destroyed by bombing at the end of the war, received a villa in Prague-Strašnice to move there after the war. Ivan did not get admitted to the university after completing his studies at secondary school of mechanical engineering and he had to do basic military service. He served in the Border Guard in Vyšší Brod and he was stationed in Chlum u Třeboně. He sabotaged the military service, and “to be on the safe side he had a varicose vein surgery done” and he did not complete the basic training. He was therefore only allowed to serve in an auxiliary troop where he worked on repairs and construction of border barriers. In 1959 he married and he began working in the Steelworks in Kladno. As a reward for his exemplary work performance his superiors sent him to study at the Faculty of Metallurgy of the Mining College in Ostrava. Ivan Ježek worked in top managerial positions of a rolling mill factory. After 1968 he refused to sign a statement of agreement with the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. He was subsequently expelled from the Communist Party and he was only allowed to work in non-skilled jobs. In the 1980s he worked on the construction of a new electric rolling mill and he became the chief of the medium-section rolling mill. When the company became privatized he accepted the post of an executive of the company Poldi Ocel. The company was based on unrealistic economical foundations and it went bankrupt. Ivan Ježek had anticipated this development and he had been warning against it. He subsequently retired.
