Josef Lambor

* 1933

  • "Mr. Peňáz also got involved and made a map of a chapel building, and the chapel began to be built. It was so in a hurry, hastily, that it attracted attention in the village, that the rough construction of the chapel was built within 14 days. The foundation stone was consecrated by Dr. Šuránek, which I think was on 10 May. Mr. Peňáz then made a proposal to paint the chapel. So, he had a great deal of credit for building a chapel in Kaňovice. "

  • "There used to be all sorts of meetings to start a cooperative, and it always turned out that no one wanted to go there. It went so far as to put a knife to the former mayor's neck that if he didn't sign it, he and his family would be moved to the border area. He was mayor at the time, and I was on the national committee, so we all decided to sign it because of him, because he was a respected man and we, I would say, like him. "

  • "As the front approached, people were preparing some shelters to keep them out of the houses, because it was not known what and how it would be. I know that we also had a dug-out shelter behind two buildings. It was all in the ground and covered with earth so that there was nothing to see. So, we survived the whole front there. There could have been ten or twelve of us, and there was no light. We only lit when needed."

  • "Apparently the partisans were working here, and just the night when [German soldiers] slept here, they were attacked by the partisans and shot the one who was on patrol outside. There was a shootout. I remember that. My father woke us up and said, 'Lie down, everyone, because anything can happen.' He had been at war, so he knew what it was all about. So, we lay on the ground at night. It went so far that during the shootout, one German was killed and then there were big problems because of it. The mayor had big problems with that, but since he was also in the First World War, he spoke German and agreed with the Germans that we could not be blamed that the Partisans came from somewhere. So, the village got along well. Otherwise, God know what would happen. When we repaired the house after the war, we still found bullet holes in the wall that were being fired."

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    Kaňovice, 26.03.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:27:18
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Kaňovice miracle

Josef Lambor was born on March 3, 1933 in Kaňovice. The family owned a farm in the village with eight hectares of fields and two hectares of forest. At the end of World War II, on April 14, 1945, twelve-year-old Josef witnessed how the Partisans shot a German soldier on guard in the village. The mayor and his family were threatened with execution for this, and the Germans allegedly also toyed with the idea of burning Kaňovice and shooting every fifth citizen. In May 1950, Josef Lambor, like many residents of Kaňovice, helped build a chapel in the village center. However, at a time of anti-church hysteria caused by the communist regime, the building did not have the permission of the authorities and an investigation took place. The local chaplain Mons. ThDr. Antonín Šuránek subsequently ended up in an internment camp and the designer František Peňáz underwent physical and mental abuse in the interrogation room of the prison in Uherské Hradiště. It was not until 1958, under pressure and the threat of eviction of the local chairman of the MNV (the local national committee) and his family, a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD) was established in Kaňovice. Josef Lambor also became a member, who then worked in the collective farm as a tractor driver and zootechnician until his retirement in 1992. In 2021, Josef Lambor still lived in his birth house in Kaňovice.