I’m sorry that neither my mother nor my father lived to see November 1989
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Vlastimil Talášek was born on 18 October 1951 in Česká Lípa. His father’s family comes from Olomouc and it is interesting that out of eleven siblings, three, including his father, became soldiers by profession and all three joined the resistance group Obrana Národa (Defence of the Nation) during the Second World War. Uncle Vladimír was arrested at the beginning of the Protectorate and executed for resistance activities in 1942. Uncle Jaroslav, although also sentenced to death, managed to live to see the end of the war, but in the 1950s was sentenced to several years in prison by the regime. The witness’s father, Oldřich, went by the so-called Balkan route to France, where he joined a forming unit of the Czechoslovak foreign army. After the defeat of France, he reached Great Britain and eventually flew to the USSR to take part in the Carpatho-Dukla battle. After its end, he stayed in Slovakia and fought in the Slovak National Uprising. After the war, with the onset of the communist regime, he was discharged from the army and was forced to work in manual jobs for the rest of his life. His mother Vlasta Talášková was also persecuted by the regime: although she spoke two world languages and spent the pre-war and war years in France, the USA and Great Britain, she was only allowed to wash dishes in a hotel. Vlastimil completed his apprenticeship and later finished technical school through evening classes. He spent most of his professional life working in telecommunications or at a computing center. At the time of the interview in 2024, he was living in Vrchlabí.”
