Dad was beaten, shot and buried. A friend found him a year later
Stáhnout obrázek
Pavel Korábek was born in Prague-Liboc on 9 May 1942 as an only child. Parents Pavel Korábek and Jaroslava Korábková came from Hradiště near Nasavrky. His father got a job with the police in Prague and joined the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II. His brother was resistance fighter Ladislav Korábek who worked with the Council of Three group in Vysočina. On 5 May 1945, Pavel Korábek went to defend the occupied main post office building in Jindřišská, was captured by the Gestapo and went missing. After a year-long search, the remains of Constable Pavel Korábek were found by his friend and colleague František Dražan, who revealed that he had been brutally beaten, shot and buried in the Petschek Palace courtyard on 5 May 1945. In May 1946, Pavel Korábek was interred with state honours and promoted posthumously. In 1953, Pavel Korábek Jr. and his mother Jaroslava moved to the village of Potěhy where they inherited his grandfather‘s house. Pavel graduated from eleven-year school and was admitted to the electrical engineering college in Poděbrady. He had to interrupt his studies because of his military service, which he completed in 1961-1963. He did not return to the college. He got married, moved to Aš to join his wife and worked as a technician at the local post office. Two children were born to them. In 1968, he witnessed the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Aš. After a few years, the family returned to Potěhy and he worked as a technician at the post office in Čáslav. All his life, he stayed out of political developments. In Čáslav, he and his wife were in contact with the then illegal Jehovah‘s Witnesses. According to information from the Archive of the Security Forces of the Czech Republic, he was won for collaboration with the StB as an agent in connection with the Jehovah‘s Witnesses in 1976, but Pavel Korábek claims he is not aware of this. He retired in 2000. He remains proud of his father‘s legacy and, as a member of the Czech Union of Freedom Fighters, tried to commemorate war heroes. In 2024, he was living in Potěhy.
