He got involved with Malý‘s group from Babice by accident
Stáhnout obrázek
Jaroslav Václavek was born on March 3, 1930 in Rokytnice nad Rokytnou in Vysočina. His father, a former legionary who returned from the Soviet Union in 1923, was a farmer and farmed 18 hectares. Mother took care of the household. After finishing his schooling, Jaroslav worked on the family farm until he was 21. In his youth he was a member of the Sokol and after the war he performed amateur theatre under the direction of Jan Bul, a popular priest in Rokytnice, who was executed on May 20, 1952 after a trumped-up charge related to the „Babice case“. At the beginning of the 1950s, a former classmate of Bul‘s, Ladislav Malý, began to move around Rokytnice and found a resistance group, and on July 2, 1951 he and his companions shot and killed a functionary of the local national committee in Babice. Jaroslav Václavek became involved with Malý‘s group by chance, as he brought cigarettes to its members at the request of his friend. On the basis of a denunciation, he was arrested at home in the early hours of 30 May 1951 and taken to the detention centre in Jihlava with a leather blindfold. He spent a month in solitary confinement, and during interrogations without the use of harsh physical violence, State Security officers offered him the possibility of release if he could persuade his father to join the JZD. The trial took place on November 11, 1951 in Jihlava and sentenced Jaroslav Václavek to four years in prison for conspiracy against the Republic. In January 1952 he was transferred to the Jáchymov region, where he mined uranium ore in the Svatopluk camp until April 1955, when he was released. After returning home, he again worked on the family farm, as his father still resisted pressure and did not join the JZD. In the autumn of 1955, Václavek was called up for two years of military service, which he served in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions. After completing his military service, he returned to Vysočina. His father was already a member of the JZD at that time. Jaroslav Václavek got married and started a family, until his retirement he worked as a tractor driver and later as a storekeeper at the JZD.
