“He had been developing other vaccines against rabies and tick-borne encephalitis. Some of this work could not be completed because upon political demand it was transferred to Moscow. The rationale was that Moscow had to have the right to control the health of everyone in the whole of the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance). That meant that all the work done in Prague had to be transferred to Moscow. There it was either ruined and came to nothing or it started to be imported here in bulk like the vaccine against polio, the Moscow polio-vaccine. Since for political reasons things had to come from Moscow, we could not do anything for our children in Prague. This was politics interfering in vital healthcare concerns and principals.”
“My boss wanted me to continue this scientific education or doctoral studies as we call it today at the Department of Biochemistry. I was examined by the department commission and was formally accepted, no one else did even apply for the position. There was no obstacle to my studies. Except the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth unionists. My boss came to my laboratory one day and told me that the unionists haven`t cleared me for Ph.D. studies. It was a great complication for me since I didn`t have anything else in view. Well there had been one other possibility but since I thought I was accepted at the university, I have turned it down."
“Now at the beginning of my second year of high school this totalitarian headmaster called me to his office and said: 'Libor, you will be president of our CYU branch.' I was already in the CYU. The girl that was president at the time was not doing well in her studies and he as headmaster did not like the idea that the school president of the youth union was someone who could hardly pass to the next year. But I said Comrade headmaster, I cannot, it is impossible. Why, asked he. 'Well you know, I do not have the right conditions to do it and I am from an inn-keeping family and I sleep right next to the bar and I am from out of town and it would be really complicated. I don`t care, he said. And that was my first big dilemma in life. Because my life could have ended right there. My plans I mean. And I had to make this big decision. I wonder today that he gave me some time to think it over, I don`t remember how much, before I told him I would do it."
“Just before the school-leaving exams the headmaster gave a little speech. He told our year: 'You know life is, and I can tell you that now so trust me, life is sometimes quite unpredictable. You will sometimes find yourselves in situations where your decisions will be really important and will set the course of your whole life, the direction in which you will move.' And then he gave us several examples of very talented students that he had in the Polička high school over the years. The message was that they have wasted their talent either by speaking against the regime or by not realizing where their best interests lay. We were all just staring at him and it made us so sad. But we were not surprised. He literally told us that he wanted to teach us to be able to see where our best interests lay in any given situation and behave accordingly. Míla Svoboda was sitting right next to me and we were both dumbfounded by what advice that experienced man was giving us. He basically told us to not take any risks or follow our beliefs but to always look for what would give us some advantage. This professor is of course long dead. But he did live to see the revolution and he died in 1997. I stopped by his grave in the village next to ours just the other day. Every time I do I remember how his advice should have been the complete opposite of what it was. I still feel that way. Young people should never be instructed to just live according to what is in their best interests.”
“I had a classmate of many years, the already mentioned Miloslav Svoboda, who was a really talented mathematician and physician and who also wanted to teach.
He wanted to study at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics to become a teacher of mathematics and physics since forever. A very demanding specialty. And what did comrade headmaster tell him? He said No way, Svoboda. You went to Sunday school. And I was sitting beside him and I went to Sunday school with him and I was the president of our school`s branch of the Socialist Youth Union. I should have (if I am being honest looking back) jumped up and say Comrade headmaster I went to Sunday school and am the president of the CUY. But I didn`t. And that is a stain on my character. I didn`t do it and I didn`t really think about it at the time."
“It was one of these rainy days in August. Maybe 24 or 25 when Polish tanks entered our village in the valley of the Black Spring on the northern border of the Žďárské vrchy hills. There were so many that it took all afternoon and the whole night before they all crossed the village and took positions in the surrounding woods. Since it was raining, the village harvester-drivers could not work in the fields and get their food there and they came to our pub for lunch. And suddenly there were tanks coming down. The road was maybe 3 meters from the pub so it was a terrible experience for me. Grandpa immediately pulled the roller-blinds down. I was in such terror yet felt a boyish curiosity at the same time. I was sitting on a bench by the window and peering through the crack between the blind and the window sill at the passing tanks. We locked the pub in the hope that the line will not stop and that no one will get out and come to our pub.“
Libor Grubhoffer was born on April 30, 1957 in Polička. He grew up in the village of Oldřiš u Poličky where his parents ran an inn called Na Bělidle. Between 1972 and 1976 he attended high school in Polička and was president of his school`s branch of the Czechoslovak Socialist Union of Youth. In 1981 he completed his Master`s Degree at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague. He wanted to continue his studies there but was not cleared to do so by the university`s youth unionists. Mr. Grubhoffer did his compulsory military service in 1981 and 1982 with a tank battalion in Jihlava. After conscription he was employed in the Research Institute for Organic Synthesis in Pardubice which he left within the year to work under Assistant Professor Dimitrij Slonim, M.D. at the Prague Institute of Sera and Vaccines. In 1986 he transferred to the Parasitology Institute of the Biology Center of Czechoslovak Academy of Science in České Budějovice. He took an active part in the process of democratization of the Academy of Science during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. In 2001 Mr. Grubhoffer was made professor of molecular and cellular biology and genetics. He was dean of the Faculty of Biology of the University of South Bohemia between 2004 and 2011 and president of the University between 2012 and 2016. In 2019 he was living in České Budějovice and working as director of the Academy of Science Centre for Biology there.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
