Jaroslav Gregor was sentenced to two years, his father to eight years and his mother to three years
Stáhnout obrázek
Jaroslav Gregor was born on 12 August 1925 in Vrbátky near Prostějov. He had two brothers, one of whom managed to emigrate to Germany soon after February 1948 and later settled in Australia. His father was a successful farmer, farming 16 hectares and raising pigs on a large scale. His mother was a housewife. The family survived the German occupation and the liberation by the Red Army without serious incident. Jaroslav Gregor graduated from the Secondary School of Agriculture in Olomouc in 1944. He then worked on the family farm. After February 1948, his father stubbornly refused to join the cooperative. On Saturday, 31 August 1951, Jaroslav and his father were taken by the police to Prostějov, where they both ended up in pre-trial detention. His mother was arrested a day later. The other brother was saved from arrest by military service. The public trial took place in September 1951 in the Workers‘ House in Prostějov. The family was charged with economic sabotage. They allegedly failed to deliver milk and eggs, fed cattle with forbidden rape plant and rented part of their own land without permission. Jaroslav Gregor was sentenced to two years, his father to eight years and his mother to three years in prison. They appealed against the verdict, but in December 1951, the Olomouc Court of Appeal increased the sentence by one year for each of them and increased the financial penalty. At the same time, they lost all their property and the homestead, all of which was forfeited to the cooperative. In fact, the house was looted by the neighbours and the remaining belongings ended up at auction. Jaroslav Gregor was sent to the Jáchymov region, where he mined uranium ore in the Nikolaj, Vykmanov and Ústřední camps, and later in the Příbram region in the Prokop camp. He experienced bullying, hunger, cold, ended up in correction several times, fell ill with jaundice, and was chained to his bed in hospital. His father was imprisoned at Mírov, from where he managed to escape. For half a year, he hid at a well-known butcher, Kovařík, in Štěpánov. A State Security collaborator found out about the hiding place and persuaded Gregor Sr. to escape across the border. However, State Security was waiting for him near Vyškov. They added another four years to his existing sentence. He suffered two heart attacks in prison. At the end of the 1950s, he was released for health reasons. His mother went through several prisons and was released from Pardubice when her sentence expired. Jaroslav Gregor was released from his sentence on 31 August 1954. He had to serve two extra years in the camp to pay off his financial penalty. He left Jáchymov in October 1956 without any means and without any possibility of housing. At first, therefore, he slept at the Olomouc railway station. After ten futile attempts to find employment, he was finally taken on as a worker at the Řempo company, where he worked until his retirement. After 1990, only the land was returned to the family. The Gregoro estate in Vrbátky still houses a post office and several rental apartments. Jaroslav Gregor received an award in 2014 as a participant of the anti-communist resistance.
