Abstract
The aim of this poster is to to pay tribute to an important person in Czech APA history - Dr. Vojmír Srdečný.
Srdečný was born on October 6th 1919 in Albrechtice in eastern Bohemia. In 1939 he started studying at the Institute for PE teachers in Prague.
After 5 weeks of the school year, November 17th 1939, Nazi soldiers arrested hundreds of students including Srdečný and deported them to concentration camp Sachsenhausen - Oranienburg, where Srdečný spent 13 months. Then, till the end of the WWII, he worked in an insurance company and in a factory.
During 1945-1947 he continued his education and worked on collecting records about deported students. After his graduation he started to work at the Rehabilitation Institute Kladruby.
He used adapted physical activity for patients after amputations or spinal cord injury. In April 1948 (15. - 24.) he organized the first Kladruby Games - a competition for patients in 22 disciplines.
It took place 3 months earlier than the Stoke Mandeville Games, which were organized by Ludwig Guttmann. Srdečný organized two editions of the Games, but unfortunately the importance of his work was unrecognized and his work in Kladruby was interrupted for ten years.
During that time he worked at the spa resort Velké Losiny with cerebral palsy patients. He returned to Kladruby in 1959 and re-started the Kladruby Games, which continue until today. (In some years the games were organized twice, so in 2017 Vojmír Srdečný, aged 97, was an honoured guest at the 100th edition.) Srdečný also worked as a teacher at universities.
He is an author of many books and articles about adapted PE.