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My dad was a good footballer. During an attack down the wing in 1942, his knee was badly injured by a vicious foul from the flank. It happened in a game of Žebrák versus Hořovice. He was hospitalized at the Bulovka Hospital in Prague, where Acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich was at the time, after his assassination.
My father was at risk of sepsis and leg amputation, which surgeons recommended so as not to endanger his life. His older brother was against amputation. The Nazis then got the best medicine to save the life of the Protector, whose life was also threatened by sepsis. After his death, the remaining sepsis medication was successfully administered by Czech doctors to my father. This saved not only his knee but also his life. His knee gradually became immobilized over time, but he was able to move around without crutches for the rest of his life.
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"I don't have any flashy bank account, I don't have any glittering jewels, I don't have any show buildings, I don't have any big assets. But I have friends and people to whom I can give my favour. That's what's important - people you can help to become better. Then you become better too."
From Bohuslav Hynek's book Diplomat in African Switzerland.
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He introduced himself by phone from the hotel and immediately invited me to lunch. I was not used to accepting such invitations. I stood to receive the Czech shoe expert, as he first said about himself at the embassy, to learn who I was dealing with and what was going on. I offered to send a car to the hotel to pick him up.
Entered a gray-haired gentleman of tall stature and neat manners, at first sight a retired worldling, but most of all a Wallachian. He had flown to Zimbabwe to help select applicants to study at "The International School oí Modern Shoemaking, in Zlín, which he co-founded after November.
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The best ambassadors of our country have often been those who were not appointed as such.
I read the slim little book by diplomat Bohuslav Hynek "Diplomat in African Switzerland" (2021) in one breath. We know each other personally from his time at the Czech Embassy in Switzerland. With the author's permission, I am making it available to the public and recommend it especially to young people and schools at all levels. One cannot but bow before Jan Pivečka (p. 86) for his life's work as a Bata worker. The story of Alžběta Pezoldová (page 63), sister of Karel Schwarzenberg, is a shocking example of the continuing failure of the Czech justice system. The rule of law and justice is determined by the relationship to existing political and power structures. As a side note, I would like to remind you that the Czech Republic has nominated as the new ambassador to the USA the former State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Miroslav Stašek, a demonstrably unprincipled person. If his diplomatic 'mission' is accepted by the US President, it will be another failure of Czech diplomacy and another disgrace for our country. J.Š.
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"Unfreedom is not only a hideous injury to the will, but to the dignity. Unfreedom is not discipline, it is humiliation." Karel Čapek
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We need to learn to truly live, not just exist and consume idly, to be content in abundance, not excess. Abundance threatens sufficiency and there will inevitably be no sufficiency unless we change the ways of our lives. We cannot live forever in debt and at the expense of future generations. If we cannot do it, nature will do it for us, and the losses will be much greater.
Let us stop being obedient, fearful and become free citizens
Let's speak out and actively oppose any form of injustice, law-breaking, bad behaviour, from pointing out a discarded cigarette to the frauds and crimes of Putin's castle-keepers, politicians, policemen, judges and prosecutors.
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From Bohuslav Hynek's book Diplomat in African Switzerland.
***
During a brief farewell - Alison Smale of the Associated Press was waiting for me behind my back - before my departure to Harare, the journalist, then a resistance fighter, currently Minister Dienstbier, whom I have admired all my adult life, praised me for having visited Archbishop Tomášek and the Slovak Matrix as part of my pre-departure preparations, but was not happy about missing the meeting with the directors of Omnipol and Desty Děčín.
In the former Rhodesia, Czech hunting guns are in vogue. I myself had one rifle sent to Ladislav Kropacek. They didn't have the one he wanted, so they sent another one. Lad'a told me it was only good for an elephant. He registered it quickly so he could resell it. Hunters called Czech rifles and shotguns Brno rifles. True, I don't know what kind of gun he used to shoot at game on weekends, but for a bottle of whiskey, or just for fun, the immunity-protected U.S. ambassador, I was never there; it may also have come from our gun factory when he picked up his second wife in the American Czech community.
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