"Unfortunately, I was offered membership in the Communist Party, but I got out of it. At that time I had a kind of... today it's called burnout. And I used to go to a doctor here who more or less by some kind of nepotism - I got to him through some acquaintance - so he quite liked me and I told him so, because I was in quite bad state emotionally. He was quite influential in the Communist Party, and then they just pulled it off."
"I was interested in it because I was supposed to do some political training for the few people who were there in Hartmanice. But they all didn't give a damn, so the way we handled it was that everybody got a notebook and I wrote the notebooks in cursive. And there was always a training session on Saturdays, which consisted of me saying a topic, and they wrote it down in the notebooks. And then we left it. Well, when the inspection came, they presented the notebooks, they said, 'How come they haven't written anything in there?' I said I couldn't force them to write anything down. I tell them what they should write down, and if they don't write it down, they don't write it down..."
"And then a note came from him from Germany saying that they were all healthy and that they were in Germany and that they were going to America. When this got out, I had no choice but to go to the safety guy at the factory, I was still working at ZVVZ, and I had to say, 'Hey, this happened to me,' and he said, 'Well, you're in a lot of trouble. I'm going to have to take away your passport, which is a travel passport, a company passport.' I was looking for India, but he said, 'Forget India, it's going to be completely impassable.'"
Ing. Václav Heller was born on August 27, 1929 in Prague, but since birth he lived with his parents in Písek. His father, Ing. Václav Heller, co-founded a pipe factory in Písek, his mother Antonie, née Lisová, worked for a coal forwarding company and later became a housewife. Václav Heller lived through the economic crisis of the 1930s and the war years in Písek. He graduated in 1948 from the real grammar school in Písek, then in 1952 he graduated in mechanical engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, specializing in steam turbines. He started his working career at the Air Equipment Manufacturing Plant (ZVVZ) in Milevsko, where he worked for 27 years. He completed his military service in 1953-1955 in Chomutov and in Hartmanice at the Technical Battalions. In the 1950s he married Dagmar Soukupová and they started a family. He participated in an international project, but due to the emigration of his cousin MUDr. Miloš Kopecký in 1963, his passport was revoked and he could not participate in the foreign contract in India. In 1979, he moved to the Chemoproject in Písek, where he worked until his retirement in 1992. He then became a sole trader and continued as a private HVAC designer. Even at the age of 95, he worked part-time as a technical consultant. In 2020, he was listed in the record books as the oldest active HVAC designer. In 2025, he was living in Písek.
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