"I was living in Ledeč nad Sázavou at the time, and I immediately got involved in the Civic Forum. I was first a member of the local organization of the Civic Forum and then, when the so-called Civic Forum Coordination Center in Prague was being formed, I was asked to go to the forestry section there, so I was actually a member of the Civic Forum Coordination Center in Prague and I actually managed the area of forestry renewal, so I went around to individual companies and helped build the new system in the forestry sector."
"Wherever I went to school, the first question was how did my dad get to the Western Front. It just started immediately because back then, whoever wasn't from the Eastern Front was the bad guy, and we were liberated by the Red Army, even if only partially, but we were marked for a long history by that."
"As a member of the government army, he was sent with other companies to Italy to fight the partisans. And most of those Czechoslovaks just defected to the partisans. And from them they then got gradually through France to the Western Front, where most of them took part in those battles on the Western Front. So dad specifically fought at the Dunkirk fortress, on the coast of France towards England, where he stayed, unfortunately."
František Morávek was born on May 24, 1942 in Pardubice and grew up with his family in a gamekeeper´s cabin in Jaroslav, where his grandfather worked as a gamekeeper. His father was a soldier and in 1939 he was transferred to the government army. In 1944, he was sent to Italy to fight the partisans, but switched sides and made his way to England via Switzerland and France, where he became a sergeant. He took part in the fighting at Dunkirk, where he died in April 1945. František Morávek had trouble getting to school because of his father‘s participation in the fighting on the Western Front. He eventually managed to graduate from forestry high school and college and worked in various positions in the industry throughout his life. During the Velvet Revolution, he was active in the Civic Forum and also worked in the Coordination Center. After the fall of the communists, he worked extensively in forestry policy, including for a time as Director of the Forestry Department at the Ministry. As an adult, he went to France to visit his father‘s grave. In 2024 he lived near Havlíčkův Brod.
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!
