I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining
Jan Lachman was born on May 18, 1962 in Ostrov nad Ohří into a large family with six children. After a while, the Lachmans moved to the town of Kdyně on the West Bohemian border. The parents led the children to the Catholic faith. The witness was not a member of Pionýr and thus did not receive a recommendation to study at the grammar school, however, he managed to get an agricultural machine repairer with a high school diploma in Pilsen to study apprenticeship. In the early 1980s, he began studying at the University of Agriculture, but did not complete his studies just before the state exams. He decided to study Catholic theology in Rome. He took advantage of a tourist stay in the former Yugoslavia and in June or July 1985 tried to cross the border into Italy in the former Yugoslavia (in the territory of present-day Slovenia). He got to Rome and began studying philosophy, theology and religion at the Lateran University. He did not speak any foreign language at first, but he eventually passed the exams as well as Italian, completed his studies and began to prepare for his doctorate. Neither the family nor his five siblings were persecuted in any way because of his emigration. At Christmas 1989 he was very happy to go home for the first time and in 1992 he returned permanently. He started working as a chaplain and at the same time taught at the Faculty of Theology of the University of South Bohemia. At that time, he met his future wife, Edita, and after a great internal struggle, he decided to resign from the priesthood and start a family. Initially, the couple did not have a place to live, the witness went through many different jobs - from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports through grant agencies, private universities, and briefly preparation for running a hospice. Today he works at the Škoda Auto University in Mladá Boleslav, has three daughters and is satisfied with his life decision.