Ladislav Žák

* 1954

  • "What did the borders look like? Here, for example, the border with Germany was quite a tightly monitored strip of installations and it was terribly well guarded. It started at the Tri-border, or the Tri-State area and actually went all the way to Austria's border with Slovakia. Every five to eight kilometers there was a small barracks, called 'companies' with maybe twenty or thirty soldiers serving in these companies, guarding the border. Before they could guard the border, they had to take some basic training. As many as 600 recruits came here to the Keller site in Aš twice a year. This is where they did the basic training for the Border Guard for a month. That means a lot of young guys came here. So did my father."

  • "We had a climbing club in Cheb, called the Skalka Cheb, and we were all registered in it. It was a bit more complicated in the past, there were certain rules given by the state, by the communists, so we were supervised because we were such a special sport. And as the borders and more options opened up, the club started to slowly disintegrate. It was no lonter that active. We were great friends with our colleagues in Selb, Germany, and they wanted to form some kind of freundschaft, to make friends. They didn't want to do it with Cheb, though; they wanted to liaise directly with Aš. So when we said we were in Cheb, they said, 'No, form a chapter in Aš, and we'll help you with that.' And it's about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary."

  • "My first job? You mean a real job? I used to also work part-time because I had to earn money to get my skis and bike, so I got jobs on summer holidays. I worked with bricklayers and in a joinery, and that was my first big job. Then I went to high school; I did rehabilitation school after high school. It used to be called a 'rehabilitation worker', now it's a 'physiotherapist'. I was in Brno for two years. Then I started working as a physiotherapist and since then I've been doing nothing but rehabilitation for 49 years. Closer to 50 years, actually. I never stopped, I was a rehabilitation worker even when in the army."

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    Aš, 31.10.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:49:38
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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He got his first skis as a child and the sport has been his life ever since.

As a rehabilitation worker at Dukla Liberec
As a rehabilitation worker at Dukla Liberec
photo: Ladislav Žák's archive

Ladislav Žák was born on 3 October 1954 in Aš where he lived his whole life. His maternal grandparents, Erna and Franz Rosenthal, lived in Aš all their lives and spoke only German. He studied rehabilitation, worked in a hospital for 17 years and spent the rest of his life working in Germany. He maintains contacts with Germany to this day (2023). He completed his mandatory military service in Dukla Liberec with top athletes as a physiotherapist and masseur. He has devoted his entire life to sports, mostly skiing and mountaineering. He co-founded the Alpin Club Aš mountaineering club in 1999. He was living in Aš in 2023.