Libor Foltman

* 1948

  • "The coach brought it in once and said, 'You can take this, and if you want to keep taking it, just sign the paper and you can keep taking it.' We said - I remember it to this day - 'Well **** this...' That's how far it went, and we gave the first voluntary batch to one of us. He was dating a girl from a farm in Moravia. When we met at a boot camp, we asked him - he had a nickname - 'Hey, Bombo, how did it go?' - 'I gave it to the cows and the bull. Darn it - instead of taking it in, the bull just blew into it and it was all over the stall, and the dope was gone.' That was the end of it. Tonda, Tomáš and I [were] absolutely opposed to it."

  • "Terrible. What I witnessed in the hospital was burned into my brain, the blood of people on the floor, sitting, maybe not rolling, but some of them were really sick. Plus they said it was 'brotherly help', and it was very hard to swallow for someone who saw it firsthand, the blood and such, how it just... Bad."

  • "We took them out. The wax fabric stretchers were stained with blood, it pooled in the bends. I had to pour it out and wipe it, and we'd go again. Then the guy found out I was a soldier, he was an older gentlemen, about 55 I guess, and I was twenty at the time. He said, 'You're a soldier, you're not coming with me again!' - 'I'll go again, there's loads of them.' - 'No, you're not coming with me, you're a soldier!' He called the nurse and she told me to stay and help them. The dental ward and the lesser stuff was downstairs, and it was crowded upstairs by then, they were operating in all the theatres. Anyone who was capable was there. The prep work took place in the dental ward - punctures, first aid. There were maybe 25 people down there. The really bad cases, serious injuries, were taken to the operating theatres. They were doing triage. A nurse came and said, 'Come, you'll help me.' We went to the transfusion station to get blood because they'd run out of blood."

  • "It was getting close to dawn and suddenly they rushed in and said there was shooting at the town hall. They brought people from there who had been shot, there was blood. I changed; no hospital clothes anymore - I changed into civilian gear. I looked at the people being brought in stretchers and I felt terrible. They were bringing them in and somebody said, 'We need cars.' Triage was ongoing, it was a bit of a chaos. There was an older gentleman, I can still see him, saying, 'I need something or someone else.' I said, 'I'm coming with you!' We got in the ambulance and went right to the corner of the town hall. There were some people shot on the ground. We took them away on a stretcher, a young guy and maybe three more people that we put in the ambulance. They were bleeding. I found out later the guy was likely dead on arrival. I guess he was a kid about my age."

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    Liberec, 27.02.2024

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He had a broken bone, yet he went from the hospital to rescue people who had been shot

Libor Foltman (standing in the centre of the middle row) at a summer racing event on plastic in Liberec. 1970 World Champion from the High Tatras Ladislav Rygl is bottom right, 1969
Libor Foltman (standing in the centre of the middle row) at a summer racing event on plastic in Liberec. 1970 World Champion from the High Tatras Ladislav Rygl is bottom right, 1969
zdroj: Witness's archive

Libor Foltman was born in Trutnov on 11 July 1948 and had four siblings. His sister Marie died at less than five years old. His father Ladislav was a locomotive stoker and his mother came from a farmstead in Studenec in the Krkonoše promontory. Libor Foltman started ski racing at the age of 11. He got a toolmaker training and made it to the Czechoslovak junior national team in combined races. He enlisted in Dukla Liberec in July 1967. In August 1968 he suffered an injury playing football and ended up in a Liberec hospital with a broken cheekbone. He was still being treated in the dental ward on 21 August 1968 when Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. Having heard the news that shots were being fired at the Liberec town hall early in the morning, he put on a Dukla Liberec tracksuit, jumped into an ambulance with the driver and drove to the scene. Under the barrels of tanks and machine guns, three men were loaded into the ambulance and taken to a Liberec hospital. Among them was a young man who did not survive his severe injuries. After that, Libor Foltman helped the medical staff take care of the wounded. With a nurse, he secured blood supply from the transfusion station. He wanted to vacate his bed in the inpatient ward of the hospital for the wounded people the same day but was not allowed into the barracks. He only got there the next day. He was nominated for the 1970 World Nordic Ski Championships in the High Tatras, coming ninth in the combined race. He represented Czechoslovakia at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan two years later but did not finish the race due to a severe fall on the ski jump. He finished 22nd at the 1974 World Championships in Falun, Sweden. He then quit his racing career and focused on coaching. He coached the team at the 2006 Turin Olympics and two World Championships. He also coached the Czechoslovak junior national team at the 1992 World Championships in Canmore, Canada. In 2024, he was living in Liberec with his wife Marta with whom he raised two sons.