“In 1938, we had been camping near Orlík at the Vltava river, and there was this man who volunteered to join us as a medic, Staff Captain Jaroslav Lichtenberg, who later became a professor of cardiac surgery and vascular surgery, of quite a renown in his time. And I just loved what he was doing. He put me in charge of the infirmary, the whole tent, there was this infirmary, where I could do all the basic medical interventions. Bandaging minor wounds and things like that, under his supervision. There wasn't much of it, but I just loved it and since then I wanted to become a physician.”
“We experienced the occupation by watching the arrival of the German convoys on March 15, 1939, in quite bad weather. And of course we were appalled by this violence which had been visited upon us. Then some kind of order was established. They allowed this self-rule, more or less, in the city, in the Protectorate, so you wouldn't feel it much until Heyrdich was assassinated. After Heydrich was assassinated, they changed the policy, they were arresting people and every day you could see those posters with names of people who were executed because they welcomed the assassination of the Deputy Reich Protector. It was quite depressing. They closed down all the establishments they considered improper.”
“Back then, we had no professor in our field of study and our time had come. Despite the fact that I never joined the Communist party and our Miloš had been living in a 'capitalist foreign country' since 1962, which wasn't appreciated very much, so I had these two stains on my CV. They were trying to find out if my colleagues with the same academic degree, who were also Communist party members, couldn't become professors instead of me. But that can't be done, as they had almost no academic credentials – they had almost no publications. So in the end, they selected me for professorship and I was appointed by the Ministry of Health and Education. Then it was 1989 and in 1990 there was already this new law regarding university education. The decision was that all the professorships from the 1980´s were revoked. So I got this letter stating I was no longer a professor, just a docent, as I got involved as well. Dr Lom was the Minister of Health, I knew him personally – his wife was an anesthesiologist. So I dared to write him a letter, stating that I wasn't appointed professor as a favour, due to my Party membership or anything like that. He answered me that he just couldn't change the law and that there's no doubt I would regain my position.”
“That was the paradox. My father worked his way up from poverty – so I was considered a bourgeois element or something like that. All the time I had to report on my background, and as I got professorship, Marie, who was our PR and managed to get around all that, they told her the best for me would be if I would just state 'laboratory technician' as my social class origin - by doing that, I could declare myself as of blue-collar origin. So all my life, I had to deal with my class origin. That's how it was then, in those difficult times.”
“And as I was what was going on with the Germans, as I started noticing the atrocities committed by the Czechs, who were taking revenge on the German population, and as I saw in what the Revolutionary Guard men were interested in, as they were inviting me to come with them to this boarding school, where those German girls were, they were in the military, maybe, to have some fun, I soon had just enough of it. I was with the Revolutionary Guards for three weeks, then I would just put my armband away, as I wanted no part in what they were doing. I don't want to play saint, but that's how it was, during those brutal times. Later in Prague, as I went for a walk, I saw this charred human corpse, hanging in the Na Příkopě Street. They would just burn someone, they tied him to a pole. I saw it with my own eyes. Then I witnessed this woman being dragged down the street, they were holding her by the legs. I witnessed these acts of violence, perpetrated by the Czechs against the German population, indiscriminately, after the tide of war had turned, I could see that, even in Prague, to some degree, and it was quite an unfortunate thing to behold.”
Professor MD Jiří Pokorný DrSC was born on April 21, 1924, in London, UK, as the son of Marie Turziková and František Pokorný, the latter of whom had been a Czechoslovak embassy employee at that time. Jiří had an older sister, Milena, and two brothers, ten years junior. In 1943, Jiří graduated from a grammar school and after the war he applied for the Charles University’s Faculty of Medicine. In 1948, he got an army scholarship and as a result he had to do a three-year military service after graduation. In 1950, he started to work as a physician at the Military Hospital in Střešovice, Prague. In 1952, he took interest in an emerging field of anesthesiology and resuscitation that was still to be established as an independent branch of medicine. In the course of his career, he became a prominent expert in his field of study. Being a pioneer of Czech anesthesiology and resuscitation, he was also one of the founders and proponents of Acute Medicine and Catastrophe Medicine in the country. As a director, he helped to create several outstanding departments, also working vigorously at the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education. From 1956 to 1972, he was the director of Prague’s Military Hospital’s anesthesiology department, from 1973 to 1990, he led the Department of Anesthesiology and ICM at Motol University Hospital. From 1960 to 1990, he also was the head of the National Research Detail Anesthesiology and Resuscitation under Critical Circumstances, with its clinical, technical and experimental sections. In 1996, he became the chief of the department of the Field Acute Care and Catastrophe Medicine at the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education. In 2000, the department became the department of Acute Medicine and Catastrophe medicine which he led till 2003. He wrote 257 papers, including 11 books and textbooks, dealing with anesthesiology and resuscitation, as well as acute care. He published 36 papers in foreign press.
