František Zajíček

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František Zajíček Cross-country skiing Bobsleigh
nation CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia Czechoslovakia
birthday November 15, 1912
place of birth Radňovice ,  Czechoslovakia
date of death January 19, 1987
Place of death Nové Město na Moravě ,  Czechoslovakia
Career
discipline Cross-country skiing,
military patrol,
bobsleigh
Medal table
National medals 2 × gold 0 × silver 0 × bronze
Participants in Cross-country skiingcross-country skiing
Czechoslovak ChampionshipsTemplate: medals_winter sports / maintenance / unrecognized
gold 1940 Pustevny 4 × 10 km
gold 1947 Špindlerův Mlýn 4 × 10 km
 

František Zajíček (born November 15, 1912 in Radňovice , † January 19, 1987 in Nové Město na Moravě ) was a Czechoslovak winter sportsman and resistance fighter . He was active in the ski disciplines as well as in bobsleigh, with which he also started at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz .

Career

Born in Radňovice near Nové Město na Moravě, Zajíček started skiing at an early age. In 1921, when he was only nine years old, he won his first cross-country skiing race in Nové Město. In 1933 he finished high school in Nové Město and went to the military academy in Hranice na Moravě . After the Czechoslovak military was disbanded in the course of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the German Empire, he was transferred to the Ministry of Education by the Ministry of Defense, which was currently being liquidated, where he worked as an official in Velké Meziříčí . Already at the beginning of the occupation Zajíček joined the resistance and organized with the group around Karel Štainer the escape of soldiers over the area of ​​today's Slovakia abroad. After the Gestapo was able to stop the action, he had to return to Vysočina with Štainer and settled there. However, he continued to work underground and procured forged ID cards, bed linen, food stamps and other necessary items for fellow campaigners. In terms of sport, he remained active at the Nové Město ski club, but trained in Velké Meziříčí. In 1940 he founded his own ski department in the Velké Meziříčí sports club and organized a cross-country ski race around the city for the first time in the winter of 1940/41. A diving competition and a military patrol run were also on the program. At the Czechoslovak Championships in Pustevny , where the team of the Nové Město ski club also included the Olympic cross-country skier František Balvín , he won the relay race with the team.

In 1943, Zajíček and fellow athletes started building a ski jump in Velké Meziříčí. Due to the circumstances of the war, the already partially completed hill was never jumped. In the summer of 1944, Zajíček was threatened with arrest, which is why he went underground from July. He was in close contact with Cyril Musil and his subdivision R 3-a of the "Calcium" resistance group. At the end of April 1945 he was drafted into the organization's military staff in Tasov . After the liberation by the Red Army , he served as an intelligence officer in Brno . In Brno he also met his future wife Marie, who was also an active athlete and whom he married in 1948. In 1947 the cross-country skiing team from Nové Město, which had already been successful in 1940, won the national championship again. At the international military patrol run in Chamonix in the same year he was third together with Karel Dvořák , Vlastimil Loub and his brother Jaroslav Zajíček . For the following Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz in 1948 , however, he only traveled as a substitute participant in this discipline, which was held as a demonstration competition for the first time. However, as a ski technician, he looked after his colleagues who were starting out. During the games he got to know Maxmillian Heinrich Ippen , a Czechoslovakian of Jewish origin who lived in Switzerland because the Czechoslovak authorities were looking for him for collaboration with the German occupiers during World War II . He had bought a four-man bobsleigh on site after his escape to Switzerland - after he had already been active in the two-man bobsleigh - and was actively looking for other drivers. Zajíček reported as the driver and the four-man bobsleigh had crossed the finish line in third best at the end of the training runs. In the competition, the newly manned four-man bobsleigh, in which Ippen and Zajíček also sat Ivan Šipajlo and Jiří Novotný , came 14th out of 15 starters. After his return to Czechoslovakia, he learned of the arrest warrant for his teammate Ippen, who did not come to Czechoslovakia.

In 1949, Zajíček was arrested and imprisoned by the military counterintelligence for collaborating with the Gestapo. A year later he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a joint trial with resistance fighter Joseph Robotka for treason. Robotka received the death penalty and was executed shortly afterwards. Zajíček came to Příbram via the penal camps in Brno , Opava , Prague , and Pilsen . He was released on May 10, 1960 as part of a national amnesty and returned to live with his wife and son. His son Kamil, who was born after the arrest in November 1949, was given the political alias of his father and whom he could only see once during the trial, he saw again for the first time in 11 years. After his release, he started working as a veterinarian in an agricultural company. In the autumn of 1986 Zajíček fell seriously ill and finally died on January 19, 1987 in Nové Město na Moravě , where he is also buried.

In 1991, four years after his death, the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense ( Czech Ministerstvo národní obrany ) completely rehabilitated Zajíček and was posthumously reassigned to the rank of major in the Czechoslovak People's Army . At the end of 1991, he was also posthumously and also on an honorary basis.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l František Zajíček. In: Velké Meziříčí Ski Club. 2012, Retrieved April 3, 2019 (Czech).
  2. ↑ Bobsledding - Men's four-man. In: users.skynet.be. July 13, 1996, accessed April 3, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Pomáhal partyzánům, po válce jel na olympiádu. In: idnes.cz. February 22, 2014, accessed April 3, 2019 (Czech).
personal data
SURNAME Zajíček, František
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak winter sportsman
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Radňovice , Czechoslovakia
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1987
Place of death Nové Město na Moravě , Czechoslovakia