He had his graduation exam on the day of Heydrich’s assassination. The chairman of the committee did not let the Czechs pass
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Josef Minář was born into an ancient family in Horní Studénky on 29 November 1922. His parents farmed on the family’s seventeen-hectare estate. He had two brothers, Leonard (*1919) and Ladislav (*1927), and three sisters, Anna (*1921), Jarmila (*1924), and Marie (*1925). After elementary school, he went to study grammar school in Šumperk. But after the German occupation of the borderlands in October 1938, it was closed. Josef was able to finish his studies at the grammar school in Olomouc. His graduation exam was on 27 May 1942, the day of the attack on Reinhard Heydrich. That day, the German chairman of the committee did not let almost all of the Czechs pass. Horní Studénky fell to the German Empire. Josef was ordered to be fully deployed to Králíky (then Grulich), where he worked in a factory for parts for warplanes. He was there together with Italian POWs, German war invalids, and prisoners who were treated especially harshly by the guards. Near the end of the war, many Germans fled in panic, and some committed suicide. Josef Minář witnessed one in nearby Štíty. The self-proclaimed Revolutionary Guard came to Králíky and arbitrarily made decisions about other people’s lives. When word got out that the original inhabitants would be deported, hundreds of new settlers began to flow spontaneously to the borderlands to settle in German homes. Josef Minář was a member of the national committee, and he was appointed to coordinate the seizure of German properties. But because he often saw the greed and recklessness of the new settlers, he lasted only two months. Then he went to Červená Voda, attended a teacher’s course, and taught in Štíty at an elementary school. In 1946, he married his wife, Bedřiška (1921-2011). In 1946 and 1947, their sons Vladimír and Zdeněk were born. In 1948, his brother Ladislav emigrated to Canada, and because of this, his parents had to be interrogated by State Security (StB). In the 1950s, impossible-to-fulfill levies forced his parents to join the Unified agricultural cooperative (JZD) in Horní Studénky. In 1958, Josef Minář and his family moved to Hradec Králové, where he taught mathematics and physics at an apprenticeship school until his retirement. In 2022, he lived in the Social Care Center in Žamberk.
