They shot my father while he was taking weapons to the partisans
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Václav Vrtal was born on 20 September 1940 in Prague. His mother Růžena was a hairdresser, and his father Ferdinand Vrtal was a mechanic at the Walter Works who raced on motorbikes in his free time. The witness lost his father in the final days of World War II. Ferdinand Vrtal had been taking weapons to the partisans camped outside of Prague. On 9 May 1945 he was intercepted by German soldiers on the hill between Voznice and Dobříš while supplying weapons. The Germans shot him three times. Some people found him heavily injured a day later. He was taken to hospital, but all rescue efforts were unsuccessful. Václav Vrtal grew up with his mother and his three-year-older sister in poverty. Because his father had died after the official end of the war, the family was denied any compensation. Václav Vrtal trained as an electrician of high-voltage equipment. He worked at a tractor station, where he suffered an injury after falling off a scaffold. He has been a disability pensioner since 1973.
