Who has the power, has the right
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Vojtěch Máša was born on the 4th of June 1947 in Újezd u Brna into a Catholic family. Out of his 6 siblings in total, two of them died at a young age. His father died in 1956 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. Vojtěch Máša had to help his family make a living from a young age and sometimes had to work in the field digging rows long into the night. After his father passed away, the Communists began to make life difficult for the family because of the firm Catholic faith of his mother and her family. She was denied the opportunity to find a job, which she had to beg for until the administrator of a brickyard took pity on her. The job was very exhausting, though, and her children had to ride her home on a trolley or a sledge sometimes. The Catholic faith was the main reason why the Communist officials took “interest” in the family. Vojtěch Máša had to deal with humiliation even at school because of his faith and he also was not allowed to study at a technical high-school until the 1980s because he was considered to be a member of a “clerically inappropriate family”. Basically all of his uncles had to endure injustice due to their faith. One of them, Vladimír Haluza, was expelled from a medical school. Another one, Vojtěch Haluza, was supposed to prove his loyalty to the regime by stepping on a cross, which he refused and he was forbidden to continue his career in education - he had been preparing to teach at a university. He died tragically in 1975 in an explosion of a heat plant in Brno whilst working another job. A forced change of occupation proved fatal for his uncle Rudolf Haluza as well. As a priest, he performed masses in Žacléř in the Czech-Polish border region in both Czech and German, was accused of conspiring with Germans and had to work as a crane operator, where his health got worse due to bad working conditions and eventually he died. The most famous member of the family, Jan Haluza, the coach of Emil Zátopek, even had to withstand physical abuse, but he endured and lived to the age of 97. Vojtěch Máša kept his faith despite the tough times. After the year 1989 he worked as a bus driver, then he was employed in a centre for the disabled and he provided social and legal consulting. He died on the 9th of October 2016.
