Josef Sousedík

Josef Sousedík (18 December 1894 – 15 December 1944) was Czech inventor, industrialist and resistance fighter.

Life
Josef Sousedík grew up in a poor family in Vsetín in Czechoslovakia. After finishing an elementary school he was trained as an electrician. He was fighting in Austria-Hungary army during World War I and participated in the battle of Slovakia in 1918. He opened his own workshop in 1920, using his patents and inventions. The workshop rapidly expanded into factory employing over 350 people. The factory bankrupted in 1934 during the Great Depression and was bought by the Ringhoffer-Tatra company which employed Sousedík as a CEO.

He was twice elected as a mayor of Vsetín for 1927–1938 periods.

Sousedík was one of anti-Nazi resistance leaders during World War II collaborating with the Clay Eva group and 1st Czechoslovak Partisan Brigade of Jan Žižka. He was arrested in 1944 and shot to death after fight during an interrogation. Sousedík was decorated by the Válečný kříž honor in memoriam by Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš.

Communist dictatorship ignored Sousedík's merits for his collaboration with western states and factory ownership.

Inventions and products
Sousedík owned over 50 patents, mostly from electrical field, an electrical rudder among other. His factory produced electrical parts for the ČSD Class M 290.0 and for the Tatra T 86.