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The shoe business the Nazis and communist could not kill

AP via Washington Times:

From China through Africa to the outer reaches of the Americas, Bata has long been synonymous with shoes. But in the land where it was born, the company name was taboo for 40 years.
In the Czech town where the worldwide family shoe empire was founded, the oldest living Bata was all smiles and understatement as he looked back, at age 91, on a life buffeted by the worst horrors of the 20th century.
How did he feel when the rise of Nazism forced him to flee his homeland? "Annoyed." And when the communists took over after World War II, seized his factory and declared Bata a capitalist evil? Again, "annoyed."
"One could have been very angry, but one had to start life again."
The place to start again was Canada, where he exiled himself in 1938, the year Czechoslovakia was dismembered and the stage was set for Adolf Hitler's war. Seven years later, after he served with the Canadian army on the battlefields, he returned to his freshly liberated birthplace, but not for long.
"I found it very sad," said Tomas Bata, "because what we thought was liberation really became a dictatorship of the communists."
Anyone associated with the company faced persecution by the secret police, as did anyone named Bata, related or not, said Pavel Velev, who heads the Thomas Bata Foundation, based in the family's old villa in the east of the country.

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Zlin is in a traditional shoemaking region, and Mr. Bata's family had been making shoes for generations. His father, also named Tomas (spelled the Czech way), founded a company in 1894 that would later swell into the giant Bata Shoe Organization.
"There were an awful lot of barefoot people," he said. "Every time we read about the growth of the population in India or elsewhere, we are very happy to see that another customer has been born."
Mr. Bata's face is tan and remarkably smooth for his age. He wore a well-pressed shirt and shiny leather shoes, which he bought -- and paid for, he stressed -- at a Bata store in Prague. He waved his arms enthusiastically above his white hair as he explained with Old World charm the magic of shoes.
"Young ladies always want to have something fashionable, something nice that fits well, makes them look good," he said, "and this is our prime customer."
Each day, a million customers try on shoes in 4,600 Bata shops in places ranging from Congo, Bosnia and Bangladesh to Punta Arenas in Chile's deep south and Yellowknife in northern Canada. Bata has 40 factories in 26 countries, and shops in 50 countries on five continents.

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