We buried my two-month old brother and a week later they executed my father
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Josef Krám was born on January 24, 1937 in Pardubice in a family of a free trader. He spent his childhood in the village Vysoká nad Labem. His father joined the resistance movement already in 1943 and he was helping the paratroopers from the well-known group Barium by various means. Together with other neighbours from Vysoká nad Labem they were hiding traces left after their deployment and he was providing them with documents, medicines and food. The family suffered a tragedy at the very end of the war. Josef’s two-month old brother Jeníček died and several days later, on May 7, 1945, his father was executed - basically just a few hours before the Second World War ended. His wife remained alone with two small children - daughter Lidmila (born 1939) and son Josef. After the war, the StB took an interest in the family and they confiscated the prosperous business of Josef’s father Antonín. Josef graduated from the J. K. Tyl Grammar School in Hradec Králové and subsequently from the Pedagogical Faculty in Prague. He later received his doctoral degree, for which he had been preparing while working a full time job. He was teaching at the Secondary Technical School of Mechanical Engineering in Rychnov nad Kněžnou for over thirty-five years. In 1968 he worked closely with the Free Radio Podorlicko, which broadcast unbiased information to the region. He was taking photos of the Polish as well as Soviet soldiers during the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and subsequently displaying the photographs, which led to many problems for him during the normalization period. In spite of the difficulties he was able to stay in the school and raise many generations of students and teach them about truthful perception of history. He is the author of the Rychnov Guide, a very interesting work which received many awards.
