Josef Pavliš (* 13 March 1926, † 2019) was born in Nová Ves near Chotěbor in a family of agricultural workers. After his father's fatal accident and his mother's subsequent early death, he was soon orphaned. He graduated from the municipal school in his native Nová Ves, and completed the lower grades of the civic (burgher) school in Chotěbor. The last years of Pavliš's primary schooling were marked by the events of Munich 1938, the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the outbreak of the Second World War. Therefore, he wandered between Czech schools in Německý Brod, Pohled and Česká Bělá, where he lived with his older brother (Krátká Ves near Česká Bělá). He completed the non-compulsory fourth year of civic school with a focus on teaching the basics of agriculture at the Czech school in Termesivy (1941).

After completing his primary school education he decided to work for the Bata Concern, a. s., Zlín, and after an entrance interview in Hradec Králové he joined the Concern plant in Zruč nad Sázavou - Bata in mid-August 1941. Josef Pavliš belonged to the founding generation of the Ruč Bata family and joined the company at the time of its construction. During the day he worked in the shoe workshops, in the evening he attended the Bata School of Labour with his peers and divided his free time between sports and cultural activities. In 1944, he passed the Bata School of Labour with a journeyman's exam and started working as a worker in the sewing workshop and handling of hills with a shoemaker's certificate.

At the very end of the Second World War he found himself in Prague among the order forces of the restored Czechoslovak Republic. From 1945-1946 he served in the Romanian port of Constance as a member of the guard unit of the Czechoslovak military group UNRRA. In the summer of 1946, he preferred to return to Zruč nad Sázavou to work as a shoemaker before being offered to join the army or the civil service. He returned to the military uniform only in 1952-1953 during a shortened one-year military service. In 1946-1952 he was a member of the TJ Sokol organisation in Zruč, before it was dissolved as part of the so-called United Physical Education (at the 1948 All-Sokol meeting Pavliš was one of the drillers and drill sergeants walking at the head of the parade). After August 1968 he was forced to leave his positions in the factory club and as a master of textile handling for political reasons due to the political purges, so he returned to the working-class profession.

Until his retirement in 1986, he lived and worked in Zruč nad Sázavou and devoted his spare time to his favourite water sports, gardening and hiking, among others as a guide for the Czechoslovak travel agency Čedok. Even after his retirement he remained inactive and worked for several years as a janitor at the Institute of Communications in Zruč nad Sázavou. He married his wife Květuša in the early 1950s and together they raised their only son Luboš. František Smítka captured Pavliš's memories of his youth in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and of the Bata Zruč of the 1940s and early 1950s during regular meetings with the Pavlišs on the occasion of their anniversaries.

Josef Pavlis' journey to and with the Bata family [PDF]