“I managed to convince people that it has to be some kind of a prospective road network. So the assistant director told me, 'Well, Joska, you have my support, but I would like to know where would you get all the cars.' See? There was this national plan that you would just share cars, not own them. That such a thing would be needed someday? That there would be so many cars?! That was something quite unimaginable. And we already had some German books so we could get to know things we didn't learn in school.”
“Next to our estate in Valteřice there was a butcher and that was the first shop they visited. And they couldn't make themselves understood as they knew no Czech and our people knew no French, so they came for me, as they knew about me somehow, so I could show off. I didn't know much but I could tell them what I had prepared for my school lesson, about Moulin Rogue and other funny things one would remember back then. It made a good impression on our neighbors in the village, and they visited us every week or two after that. We already had a radio and I remember that we listened to the broadcast in Czech and we knew when there was one in French. It was like, 'London calling', so they came and listened to that in our house and maybe they could even hang you for doing something like this, I don't know, but we just took the chance.”
“Our village was annexed during the last, additional phase of the German occupation, and I can still remember it happened on November 24th, as the general annexation took place several months before that, but this was an addition, as they annexed all the villages because of this road Trutnov-Vrchlabí-Jablonec-Jabloneček-Liberec, today's State Road no. 14, which went through this area and our farm had been standing just next to it. So that area had become part of Sudetenland and we – due to this appeal by the Czech government in London, as president Beneš appealed on Czech farmers not to leave their land, and my parents followed, of course, and there was this unfortunate fact, as our farm was the first one by the road from Vrchlabí to Hrabačov and on and it was quite noticeable, it would be good to have a photo of it. And the Germans behaved differently during certain phases, as there were Germans from the Reich coming to Sudetenland and that maybe it took opposite direction, but these were interested, maybe it was offered to them by someone, I don't know, they were inquiring if they could buy it. There were talks of annexation rather than purchase, so we were living in quite uncertain circumstances... We were always watching for someone to come wanting something.”
Josef Mach was born on June 22nd, 1924 in Valteřice in the Podkrkonoší region. Although populated solely by Czechs, the village had been annexed as part of the borderland on November 24th 1938, probably due to its strategic position. Josef studied at a grammar school in Jilemnice and later at a German grammar school in Vrchlabí. He passed his school leaving exams in 1943, when all his German schoolmates had already been sent to war. After the war he had to do an additional exam in Czech. After graduating from the grammar school he got a job in construction as there was a threat of him being ‘totally deployed’. He had been working in Trutnov and was sent to a technical school in Dresden several times. After the war he went to Prague to study at the Czech Technical University. After 1948 his parents refused to join an agricultural coop (JZD). As a result, their sons had to do their compulsory military service at the Technical Auxiliary Battalion (PTP). However, Josef was exempted from military service on medical grounds. His uncle, Václav Mach, was accused of assaulting a Communist and sentenced to one year in the Jáchymov labour camps. As a civil engineer, Josef Mach was assigned to Stavoprojekt national enterprise branch in Turnov. There he took part in building a route leading through Vrchlabí to Špindlerův mlýn. Later, he designed a ring road in Hradec Králové, so-called Gočár Ring Road. After 1989 he was employed in the private sector. He took part in the renewal of the Czech Civil Engineer Union and also helped to create a professional board which he afterwards presided for several years. After retiring he lived in Hradec Králové with his wife and he used to visit Valteřice, the locality where he was born. He died on October 6, 2022.
