"My parents were never in any party; they always promoted Sokolism, this kind of Sokol element. I remember the communist coup. I remember that day very vividly. I think my father worked as the head of the construction authority in Znojmo. He came home completely devastated that day. I know he was trembling. The Communist Party was quite strong in Znojmo, and then the coup. They put an application form on his desk, for the whole family, and said, 'Now, sign this, or else.' I still remember that night. He was shivering on the bed all night. Mommy comforted him. Dad got up in the morning, I remember it very well, and he went to the bathroom. He came out of the bathroom and said, 'I don't want to go to a political prison a second time,' so he signed it. My mother signed and I signed. I was in the septima grade at the time. I still remember him saying, 'I hope it won't be that bad.'"
"Daddy was soon arrested because he became involved in the Defence of the Nation resistance quite early on. The first wave soon gave itself away. It soon got out, so he was arrested. In the end, I have to say that it probably saved his life, because all the participants from that wave went on trial. Daddy got eight years and was sent to labor camps in northern Germany. He survived, of course with the appropriate difficulties, but he survived. Later on there were many such purges. For example, the Gestapo came for dad twice more on different occasions. It was at the time when they were arresting the Sokol officials. I know that very few of those arrested came back, because they mostly ended up in Auschwitz and Mauthausen. My uncle was among them."
"I completed my first class in Znojmo. Just when I started attending the second class we had to leave Znojmo. We left when the Sudetenland was occupied. We were leaving under very dramatic circumstances. There was a large German minority in Znojmo. For example, they broke our windows precisely because my father was very active in Sokol and was very well known for that. In the end, the way we left was that my uncle had to come for us in his car and drove us out of Znojmo with just two suitcases in the car. The car's trunk was even shot - they were shooting at us. Such were the circumstances under which we were leaving at the beginning of the war after the occupation of the Sudetenland."
Jiří Komárek was born on 28 May 1931 as the only child to civil engineer Josef Komárek and teacher Ludmila née Kolíbalová. The family lived in Znojmo and the parents were active in Sokol. After the declaration of the Sudetenland in 1938, they left Znojmo under dramatic circumstances. At the very beginning of the war, the father joined the anti-Nazi resistance organised by Sokol (OSVO). They cooperated mainly with the Defence of the Nation. Not long afterwards, he and several others were uncovered and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp in northern Germany. He arrived home in 1945 in very poor condition. After the war, the family returned to Znojmo and the father resumed his job at the construction authority. Later on, they all joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Ludmila Komárková left the party soon; she did not agree with its policy. She had to quit teaching and started working as a dish washer. Jiří Komárek and his father openly supported the reforms of the Prague Spring, for which they were expelled from the party after 1968. The father retired early. Jiří Komárek was dismissed from his position as deputy head of the Institute of Biology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Třeboň. Thanks to several superiors, he was able to stay at the research institute as a rank and file lab worker. Throughout the 70s and 80s he had problems to travel abroad. In early 1989, he took part in the first Czechoslovak expedition to Antarctica. Post 1989, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Faculty of Biology (now the Faculty of Natural Sciences) at the University of South Bohemia, where he headed the Department of Biology in 1991-1998. Jiří Komárek lived in Třeboň in 2023.
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