Something opened in the utter darkness and we were engulfed in a blinding light. We were standing on the steps of a Yugoslavian customs house
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The academic painter Milan Ressel was born in Ostrava on 1 December 1934 into the family of army officer Alfréd Ressel. His father decided to emigrate following the German occupation. Thus in early 1940 Milan and his parents and elder brother set off through Slovakia and Hungary to Yugoslavia. The family stayed in Belgrade for some time while their father left for the Middle East together with other soldiers. After a few months Milan, his mother and his brother boarded a boat in Split, Croatia, and headed for Marseilles, where they reunited with their father. When France capitulated, the Ressels boarded a British destroyer and sailed via Gibraltar to Liverpool. At first, the family lived in London, but because of the bombing they were evacuated to the village of Bunbury near Chester in north-west England. His brother attended a Czechoslovak school in Whitchurch. Upon returning to London, Milan attended a school in Edgware. His brother joined the Czechoslovak army and later took part in the siege of Dunkirk, while his father journeyed to the Soviet Union to join the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps as an artillery commander. The family returned to Prague in the summer of 1945. His father was released from the army in the early 1950s. He worked in the mines in Ostrava for a year and a half, and was then employed in Prague in car repair shops and in an advertising company. After retiring he wrote his memoirs. Despite problems due to his origin, Milan Ressel was accepted to study at the Academy of Visual Arts in the 1950s. He is an important Czech creator of comics, which were published in the magazines Ohníček and ABC.
