Be patient, hold on and work on your liberty - it is great and worth it
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Petr Výboch was born on 9 June 1947 in Stráž pod Raleskem. He was named after his father who was born to expats from Slovak Vígľaš in the Croatian town of Kukulvjevac near Daruvar. His mother Marie Six was a member of a German minority living in Croatia. Just before the start of the war in 1939 his parents left to work in the German town of Geislingen. In 1945 they decided to return to Bohemia, finding shelter at Petr’s uncle Pavel’s house at a farm in Stráž pod Ralskem. The family resisted convincing for the collectivization of the farm up to the point where aunt Anděla beat a secretary of the local council who again came to agitate, with a pitchfork. An acquaintance who was a medical doctor confirmed her temporary derangement so she avoided court trial but the family had to give up their 14-hectares of farmland. Petr Výboch moved out with his parents, settling in Stráž nad Nisou. They bought a small house and farmed a forty-are field. They gave away the required quotas and supported Petr’s aunt and uncle who in the Common Agricultural Cooperative earned 120 crowns per month and had no time to do farming of their own. Petr’s father would never allow him to go participate in the 1st of May march, instead, they would celebrate by working in the garden. Next to their house was a pole up which they would pull the Czechoslovak flag on the anniversary of the 1918 foundation of the Republic. Petr Výboch was a great student and was thus accepted to a technical school without having to go through the admission process. However, by the end of the summer break, he received a notification claiming that he was rejected from studying because of a large number of applicants. Instead, he trained to be a tool and die maker and in 1966 was drafted to do his military service in Bor near Tachov. The regiment was composed of conscripts and officers who were assigned there in punishment. Shortly before the end of his service he had witnessed the dramatic occupation of the country by the Warsaw Pact armies. He then took a job at Energomontáž Liberec where he had worked until retirement. The Výboch family had many relatives including grandparents in West Germany and their common visits were accompanied with a complicated and uncertain obtaining of administrative permissions and interrogations at the police. Petr Výboch became active as a mechanist in the automobile racing team Svazarm under the leadership of driver Vlastimil Tomášek. He is engaged in automobiles to this day, working in Liberec’s Technical Museum.
