The view northeast of Sněžné, about twelve kilometres from Nové Město na Moravě, is attracted by the blue radar dome. Few people today remember that a tourist hut once stood on its site and Buchtův hill was turned into a ski resort in winter. As it becomes deserted, and despite the signs of at least some care it is overgrown with bushes, it is slowly being forgotten that the landscape where Ladislav Pešek once walked during the filming of the fairy tale Obušku, z pytle ven! used to be a sanatorium. At first it was used for tuberculosis patients, gradually the therapeutic qualities of the local air began to attract patients with other lung diseases, until finally the area turned into a long-term care facility before it was finally closed in 2011. For fifty-one years, Dr. František Bárta took care of patients at "Buchťák", two decades of which he was the director of the hospital. The fate of his family is reminiscent of that of Všichni dobří rodáci, another Czech film classic that was filmed in the region. Despite his undesirable class background, he was admitted to the Faculty of Medicine at Masaryk University at a young age, was the first native of his village to graduate from the university, and although he was never a member of the Communist Party, he achieved a leadership position. In the autumn he will celebrate his ninetieth birthday, an important milestone in his life, but he takes the turns in the forests above Nové Město with the confidence of a rally veteran. And because his memory is still serving him, we went to Buchtův hill against the flow of time to revive memories that should not be forgotten.
I was born in 1934 in Velké Janovice. I had four years of municipal school, and during the Führer's time I entered the town school, which was for five years, but after four years I went to the Bishop's Grammar School in Brno. But then the comrades closed it down, threw us out and sent us back to Nové Město. And in '53, when I graduated, we were the only class that didn't have a blackboard. We took a picture of ourselves in the blocks, to which the comrades told us that we couldn't do that, God forbid, if we put it up somewhere, they said we had to be in the union jacket. But again we said no, and so we were without a sign.
What was your path to medical school then?
Although there may be reasons, I don't really know why, but I wasn't accepted the first time. So I worked for a while in Bystřice nad Pernštejnem in a distillery, and then in Brno I joined the Laboratory for Vertebrate Research of the Academy of Sciences under Professor Kratochvíl at the University of Agriculture (today's Mendel University - author's note). I was tempted to stay with them to do a degree in agriculture or forestry, but I didn't want to, even though I enjoyed the work.
What do you think were the reasons why you weren't accepted to medical school right away?
My parents were private farmers, we had four hectares, and they didn't join a cooperative. My father, he was anti-regime all the time, so he had problems and was severely ostracized. During the war he was an anti-fascist fighter and hid partisans. After the war he was a non-partisan, then he joined the People's Party, and because he could speak and knew quite a few paragraphs, as secretary of the national committee he defended farmers in the district who were being punished by the UAC (united agricultural cooperative) for not fulfilling quotas that they couldn't even meet. Those who don't remember don't know what kind of crap that was... I know that my dad had some contacts in Prague who provided him with information, but he never told me more, he just answered me: "What you don't know, you can't say." So I'm amazed in retrospect, when I think back on all this, that I got away with it, because my siblings weren't taken to college anymore.
What got you excited about medicine?
I've wondered many times if I can think of anything in particular, but I don't really know. My grandfather was the perfect folk vet, coursing cattle that others had already written off, but I don't think he influenced me that much...
When, after a period at agricultural school, you were finally accepted to medical school, you didn't have any problems with your studies because of your class background?
Oh, yes, I did, I changed my field of study, for example. I had a general degree, but they put me in dentistry. Other classmates tried to get into hygiene or had to leave for Prague after their first year. I always rebelled, but I also had - I can't say acquaintances, more like close - people who I guess somehow kept a protective hand over me. I remember, for example, a parish priest who was a great connoisseur of wine and had his cellar in Čejkovice, where the professional hierarchy went... I don't know if he was able to intercede for me, nobody ever said anything to me, but I always got out of everything somehow. Otherwise, I didn't have any study problems...
How did you perceive the social climate of the second half of the 1950s, which was marked by the consolidation of communist totalitarianism?
It happened, for example, that a classmate was picked up by the STB on his way home from the canteen and held for two hours at Leninka (the STB headquarters on today's Kounicova Street - author's note) because of a letter of mine, but at that time one had a certain sense of smell for these things. Otherwise, I would say that the social climate was quite tolerable. I had the advantage that I lived in Nové Město with a classmate (Karel) Čada, who, before he died, was the head of the St. Anne's ENT. He was three grades above me, he was well equipped for sports, and when I started my freshman year, he dragged me into the boating and skiing club, so I then represented the school in skiing. I had a second class performance in giant slalom. We did our last races in the High Tatras, where we spent a fantastic ten days under permanently blue skies, riding the chute from Lomnicak all the way down to the hotel. Two years after my studies I had a discount on lifts. And thanks to skiing, I also met my wife, who is 8 years younger and studied dentistry, on a ski course in the Jeseníky Mountains.
Which teachers from the faculty do you still remember?
Of course the biggest problem was professor (Karel) Žlábek. Anatomy was for two years and it had the highest mortality rate. And then there was experimental physiology. Once you'd mastered that, you could...
“All the heads of the clinics and hospitals were in the Communist Party, so when I attended some meetings, I sat with my secretary on the side, drinking coffee, while the rest of the people discussed within their party group. We all knew each other professionally, so it was a bit comical.”
František Bárta
When you graduated, were you determined to return from Brno to Vysočina?
No! At that time, there was a system of placements, and I received a notice from the dean's office to come to Buchtův hill. I was supposed to go there with one other classmate. So I went to the then boss (František) Kropáček to see if I could start a little later, because we had some student boating event. He didn't care, he told me to come when I came. But within two or three days another official letter came, cancelling the placement at Bucht'ák and sending me somewhere in the north of Bohemia. So I went back to Kropacek, who had been there for about two years, saying that if they were interested in me, I would come in right away. He said he did, so we stamped it, signed it, and I wrote to the dean's office that I couldn't go to Bohemia, that I had already started work on a proper placement. And I waited to see what would happen. A few days later, another envelope arrived, and by then I was threatened with closure and that I had to terminate my employment immediately and start working in North Bohemia. So I went to my boss again to ask what to do, and Kropacek told me to wait and that he would sort it out. He was then in the office of the district committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, he went to Brno, and in the afternoon he called me and said, "So you're staying!" What he was discussing there and with whom, I don't know. But I am convinced that he was covering for me in a way, because when he resigned as director, he proposed me as his successor. So I think politically he had a protective hand over me.
Have you not been involved in politics yourself?
No! When the proposal for me to become the director of Bucht's Hill passed, the head of the OÚNZ (District Office of National Health - author's note) told me that if I was approved, I had to join the party. I replied that I would not join any party and that they should keep the post. That was the end of all our discussion on the subject. My main concern was medicine. I went on various internships so that I could do bronchoscopic examinations, cytology, lung punctures and other procedures... I was busy enough with work, and since I lived on Buchtův Hill, I used to entertain myself after dinner by looking into the microscope.
As an independent director, you must have been pretty unique, right?
Well, yeah. All the heads of the clinics and hospitals were in the Communist Party, so when I attended meetings, I sat with my secretary on the side, drinking coffee, while the rest of the people acted within their party group. When they had discussed everything, they just said, "You're going to do this and that," and that was it. We all knew each other professionally, so it was a bit comical. Of course, over the years there were some other attempts to see if I would change my mind and join the party, but I didn't. My strength was that I was medically trying to do things that others weren't doing, or didn't do until later.
Still, it wasn't exactly fun to operate in that environment, was it?
Of course, I had to take part in socialist labour brigades and similar shenanigans. Another colleague and I, who was also not in the party, had to attend VUML - the Evening University of Marxism-Leninism. Marxism and Leninism had already been drilled into us at the faculty, and now we had to listen to some bullshit... I had to go there, but in order to go, the party chairman had to give me a stamp to release me from work. You could have had people dying, but that stamp excused you from anything! You also had to do something, show some activity, especially as a director, so I worked for the ROH (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement - author's note), I was on the regional work safety committee. If you haven't experienced it, you don't know anything...
The facility on Bucht Hill was built before the war and was allegedly used by Hitler's youth during the war. Do you remember this place from your boyhood?
Not here, I only remember the Hitler Youth from my hometown. In Dalečín we used to shout at them as boys... But yes, the first inhabitants at Buchtek were really the Hitler Youth and later they were very fond of remembering it because they were away from the war and safe here. After the revolution, some of them came back here as adults for excursions. So I even got in touch with two brothers - one of them had stayed here as a boy - and they invited us to Oberhausen, where my wife and I went to visit them two or three times. They arranged for us to visit the lung ward of the hospital there, where a Jewish doctor accompanied us for a change, and the next day the German newspapers wrote about it. I still have the letters we exchanged at that time.
What was it like in the early 1960s when you started here?
It served mainly tuberculosis patients. There were three pavilions, in which the accommodation was gradually improved, plus, of course, bedrooms, a kitchen, a laboratory... Before Kropáček, there was a boss, whom I saw only once, he was probably fired for political reasons. Kropáček was a Prague man with all the makings of a Prague man, about a hundred and twenty kilos. He was in the party, but I can't complain about him, he always treated me well and supported me professionally. When I came here with the idea of starting to do some new types of procedures or examinations, he only had a condition that I had to have an official paper for it, for which I spent six weeks in Prague at Bulovka, for example with the chief surgeon (Antonín) Tománek, who was at that time a national figure in endoscopy, or in Brno in oncology, thanks to which we could then curate tumors here. And Kropáček was glad that I enjoyed it and that we could do it.
To what extent have you been able to help cancer patients?
There were relatively few drugs at that time, so I learned different combinations for different types of tumours. Sometimes I was able to prolong a patient's life by a year or two with chemotherapy, but of course it is not comparable to today's results. Often we couldn't even find drugs that had an effect, but just didn't. The results weren't standardized enough to guarantee anything to patients...
Did your interest in lung disease develop here on Buchtův Hill?
Yes, I'm sure. I was flirting with surgery for a while and I had offers... I wasn't clumsy, you have to be a bit skilled even for endoscopies... Sometimes I sent a colleague to Prague and when he came back and I looked at his work, I froze! You need to be willing, but you also need skill for some things... But I simply loved it at Bucht's Hill! Of course, at that time there was another question if one wanted to get to a position, but I have already talked about that. I only got through thanks to my boss, Kropacek, who probably kept his fingers crossed for me...
“On Bucht's Hill, one could occasionally give someone a hand as part of the problems with the regime. We had people here who were in danger of going to prison, so it was arranged that they had to be couriered, and that's how we cleaned them up.”
František Bárta
When did you become a director at Buchtův Hill?
In 1976. Three years earlier I was offered to go to Sweden on a one-year scholarship. I was offered it by the main republican expert, he was in the party and at that time he was the boss in Uherské Hradiště. (Emanuel) Tihon was his name. He said I would be stupid if I refused. So I filled out an application form, but in the end I didn't go anyway, because they didn't approve me and gave it to the daughter of the then head of Bulovka. Tihon was furious when he found out, but then she got married there, so I guess everything worked out the way it was supposed to.
How did Buchtův hill function within the whole network of lung sanatoriums in the former Czechoslovakia?
We used to have regular meetings of the heads of the facilities from the Czech Republic and Slovakia and we all knew each other. It was no problem to call each other and send patients when needed. Because only certain facilities were able to provide, for example, surgery. Not us, we were a so-called "B" facility, where patients were mainly treated and rehabilitated. But it used to happen that people died here. Whether from other diseases or from lung diseases, because they were incurable and resistant to the drugs available at the time.
What kind of daily regimen did your patients have?
The regimens were different. Some patients lay down for most of the day, were fed, and if they were able to do so, they just left to do their physiological needs. The mobile ones used to have, for example, rehabilitation outdoor exercises combined with a walk. On the other hand, patients who had tuberculosis on a large scale, including coughing up bacilli, and were therefore a significant risk to the environment, had limited contact even within their wards. Or, for example, if someone was unbearable, we would call another hospital and have them transferred. Because such a positive person couldn't go out into society, that was what the law was for. And elsewhere they had special closed wards for that. We didn't have children here, only adult patients, and we separated them into male and female, and positive and negative, or specific patients and non-specific patients, because gradually patients with lung diseases other than tuberculosis started to predominate. Altogether, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and two beds.
Until when was tuberculosis the main problem?
Until about the mid-seventies. Then it started to change. But of course, our options depended on what the money was. It wasn't easy, and you had to maintain connections. For example, thanks to one such acquaintance, I took the director of a company to a trade fair and he bought me a fibroscope. That was great! We could start doing bronchoscopy, various lung punctures... Today I wouldn't dare to do it for anything! For forensic reasons... And even back then, I sometimes had my ass pulled down like that! Twice I held a man on the bronchoscope for over an hour and I couldn't stop the bleeding, we were all covered in blood, and I was tamponing. I mean, I could defend it because it was a routine procedure, but still...
Was there any patient case that you particularly remember for any reason?
Not directly at our hospital, but for example, during my endoscopic internship with my supervisor Tománek at Bulovka, I experienced a rarity when a lady had to have a tracheostomy, they pulled out about four centimetres of her trachea because she had a hole in her throat and at that time a piece of handcuff was put in to prevent it from closing. And they stitched her up. After the operation, they were standing outside the operating room, talking, and all of a sudden an orderly came running in, saying that the lady was in arrest. The surgeon replied that it was a stitch then, that he couldn't reopen it because it wouldn't stitch up again. But Tománek had a new battery-operated bronchoscope at the time, so he didn't have to plug it in, as it was usually done, so he says "Wait!", runs up to the lady who was no longer breathing, thrusts the bronchoscope into her and reports "It's all right!" The lady survived. That will stick in your mind... By the way, the surgeon went bad that time. He died in a car crash when he hit a van in front of him carrying some planks of wood, and the planks, as they crashed through the windshield, decapitated him...
How did you protect yourselves on Bucht's Hill from contracting tuberculosis or other diseases?
We had to consistently change into special gowns, which were only for rounds, and we also had a drape and shield that we had to wear to the ward.
And did it happen that any of the staff still got infected?
Well, I suppose so... Look, there were a lot of violations. The staff, many of them were alcoholics, so there were problems with that... There were all sorts of contacts with female patients... This is also described in various books... You couldn't control it! Some parts of the premises were more accessible, so patients would run out the window...
How did you handle it as a director?
We had various lectures or interviews with these people... We threatened them that if it happened again, we would close them down, which happened now and then. If someone was massively positive and kept running away, we'd transfer them and they'd be locked up. We didn't have special locked wards, but we did have to restrict some patients that they weren't allowed to go anywhere. So for us it just meant segregating them into certain rooms within the ward, where they would then get separate food... Of course we tried to segregate the patients so that someone who had normal asthma, for example, wouldn't come into contact with someone who was more seriously ill, but as I say, people were breaking this... For example, bronchitis patients who were often normally functional, they would often run off to who knows where, including pubs. We had fences cut all the time.
Did you have any problems at higher places because of that?
It's true that when I was the boss, I was denounced all the time. I stole everything there and ate the whole kitchen! (sarcastically) Who turned me in, I don't know. I even had to explain to the Ministry that we were losing coal. But what could I say to them, what more could I do as director? Our fences were cut by patients, they were always being repaired, our janitor was eliminated, and as director I can't sit in front of the boiler room in the evenings and see if anyone is stealing coal. It was all discussed and it wasn't that much fun... As I learned after the revolution, I was also followed by the STB, although they didn't tell me more...
Otherwise, I can imagine that it must have been quiet compared to Prague or Brno, right? And even for the patients...
Yeah... There were some, let's say, problems with the regime. We had people who were in danger of going to jail, so it was arranged that they had to be couriered, and we "cleaned them up" at Buchtův Hill... I don't want to be specific, because of course we weren't allowed to know. After all, they were public figures... People from editorial offices, from radio...
How was the air quality here? Your friend Dr. Šustáček recalled that his patients told him that one stay at Buchtův Hill was worth four stays at Charles' Well...
That's right! Before the actual construction, an extensive air quality survey was carried out and Buchtův Hill came out the best. And even people who couldn't breathe in the Tatras at some fourteen hundred metres could breathe perfectly and the air quality was comparable. This is a really ideal place, some seven hundred and thirty metres above sea level.
Until when were you the director of Buchtův Hill?
I retired as director when I was sixty-two years old. I was succeeded by my former subordinate and colleague Pavel Petrů. His wife is still my attending physician and his brother František is a gynaecologist. But I continued to work at the hospital until its closure in 2011.
The hospital was officially closed for economic reasons; the county considered its operation too costly and unsustainable. How did you perceive its end and how do you perceive the situation that has been dragging on for thirteen years since then, during which time the premises have still not found a new owner and are falling into disrepair?
It's a dusty business! Dusty! Normally, they'd have given up on it here. I don't want to say who and how, but they did... I had no say in it at the time, but all sorts of bluffs were being told... Just consider that the whole complex was offered for sale, first for fifty, then for thirty million crowns. That's a ridiculous price. It's only the timber on those 19 hectares that's worth that much! There's money behind everything. Does anyone know what has been stolen in this republic since the regime change? Some guys must've wanted to take the Buchtův hill for themselves...
Professor Jiří Vaněk is a pioneer in the field of Czech transplantology and implantology. He did not want to study dentistry in his youth and always tried to push for dentists to have a broader medical education.
Despite her - from the point of view of the communist regime - "incorrect origin", Dr Jiřina Jedličková developed into a renowned hematologist at the Third Internal Medicine Clinic of the St.Anne's University Hospital and the regional surgeon for hematology, and later, in the 1990s, the head of the local blood bank.
