Otto Šebor

* 1933

  • “They blindfolded me and took me to a police van which transported prisoners. The back of the van was divided into tiny cells where they locked up the transported prisoners. They put me into one of these cells where you could neither stand up, nor sit, and in this painfully crooked position we set out on the way. I couldn’t see the other inmates who were inside the van, nor did I know where we were going. Gradually, from the talk of the other inmates which the guards tried constantly to subdue, I understood that Kulhánek was among others also on the transport.”

  • “After I had been for a few days on the third department of the Kartouzy prison - or if you like at the ‘correctional and labor camp’ in Valdice u Jičína – I was taken to the investigation room where two civilian employees showed up and wanted to talk with me. It turned out that they were in fact agency employees of the secret state police (StB). They started to exert very intense pressure on me with the aim of talking me into signing a collaboration agreement with the StB. Of course they promised me lots of things. They said that they needed young people to work for them, people that they could rely on. They told me that I’d be given the opportunity to finish my studies. They promised that if I signed the cooperation, my parents would be released from prison. This was an immensely strenuous pressure that they exerted on me – in particular the part with my parents. The vision of my parents being freed from prison was of course extremely tempting for me. However, I intensively thought about the verity of these promises. After my experiences from the custody in Cheb and from the court prison in Prague, Pankrác, I was becoming more and more aware of the fact that their only goal was to lure me into cooperation with them and that they would promise me anything in order to achieve this. Anyway, they weren’t bound to deliver on their promises later on. You couldn’t trust their promises because there was no guarantee they would fulfill them. The only thing that was certain was the monstrous obligation, the thought that the StB would catch me into its net.”

  • “I could see from the window that Kulhánek together with another inmate who was part of the group that had just gone on the walk began to climb up the wall in the place where the wing of the prison building reached the roof of the garage that belonged to the prison administration. I was fascinated as I saw the two men climbing up the wall like two apes. They climbed on the rooftop of the garage and ran toward its edge from where they jumped into the treetop of a maple tree that belonged to an alley adjacent to the prison building. They each jumped into a different maple tree, the round treetops being cropped and alive with leaves. You could see how the branches spread out under the weight of the bodies and you could hear the sound of the impact of their hobnailed prison boots on the pavement. Just seconds into this, somebody shouted ‘Stop! Stop!’ and I heard the sound of shots being fired. This is a story which ended miserably for Kulhánek and his fellow inmate. These two men had decided to escape from the prison walls but they had bad luck. Kulhánek landed on the pavement just a few meters away from the commander of the Cheb prison who was just on his way to work.”

  • “After his arrest, Kulhánek was being taken by the StB officers for identification to the headquarters in Bartolomějská Street. They were in doubt about his identity because he showed them a fake ID. They took the tram No. 2 for the way from the place of arrest in Kateřinská Street to Bartolomějská Street. When the tram was approaching the station at Charles Square, Kulhánek took advantage of the sharp braking of the tram, knocked down the two accompanying officers and jumped out of the tram which was still moving and braking. The StB agents were closely on his heels and didn’t hesitate to use their guns. He tried to shake them off by a quick run through Charles Square to Ječná Street where he spotted a woman getting out of one of the houses to walk her dog. At night, the houses were usually locked and thus Kulhánek used this opportunity to get inside the house, to the inner courtyard and from there to the courtyards of the other buildings from where he could have hoped to escape his pursuers. In the course of the shooting and the crazy chase, he repeatedly fell down and hurt his knee. Finally, when he was running through the elevated ground floor and down the staircase to the courtyard from where he wanted to escape, he fell down and that’s where the StB officers captured him.”

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Destiny has endowed me with a few wonderful people

Otto Šebor
Otto Šebor
zdroj: Karel Kužel (sběrač)

Otto Šebor was born on July 10, 1933, to his parents Anežka Šeborová and Bohumír Šebor in Bystřice u Benešova. His parents were farmers and his father had a technical education. In the period of the German occupation, the vast area where the family lived was converted into a firing range for SS units and they had to move out. They managed to find an employment with their relatives in Slivenec, where Otto’s father got a job at the farm. Since the communist coup in 1948, the situation of private farmers was deteriorating and the father of Otto was labeled as a kulak. What proved to be an even worse problem, however, was the war-time engagement of Otto’s uncle, Mr. Žatecký, in the ranks of the RAF. For his war-time resistance against the Nazis, Mr. Žatecký was sent to the uranium mines, from where he nevertheless managed to escape. Otto’s family provided him with a shelter but unfortunately, his hideout was rather soon revealed to the secret police. This was followed by the arrest of Mr. Žatecký, the whole Šebor family and other supporters of Mr. Žatecký. The family members were sentenced to multiple-year prison terms in a trial that took place between the years 1954-1955. Otto’s mother was posted in a female prison in Pardubice, Otto and his father were placed in the Kartouzy prison in Valdice. Otto spent a part of his prison term in Valdice as a laboratory technician working in the prison hospital. He was released at the end of 1958; both of his parents were amnestied in 1960. Having a huge blot on their cadre profiles, it took the members of the family many years before they managed to attain a more acceptable status. Otto worked for the ČKD and expanded his technical education. During the so-called “Normalization” in the 1970s, he worked in the company “Office Appliances”. In 2013, as a former anti-communist resistance fighter, he lived to see himself being given a certificate pursuant to the Act No. 262/2011 Coll.