“Kunčík was the principal person. They failed in their attempt to cross the border, and they were caught and interrogated. Kunčík was sentenced to ten years and Němčický to eight years. Then there were also some younger schoolmates and some of them got imprisoned as minors. I got two and a half years, and when president Gottwald died and amnesty was declared, they commuted my sentence by one year and then they let me go home. It was quite a journey. I was arrested in my summer linen clothing and it was freezing when they released me in January.”
“Kunčík was the principal person. They failed in their attempt to cross the border, and they were caught and interrogated. Kunčík was sentenced to ten years and Němčický to eight years. Then there were also some younger schoolmates and some of them got imprisoned as minors. I got two and a half years, and when president Gottwald died and amnesty was declared, they commuted my sentence by one year and then they let me go home. It was quite a journey. I was arrested in my summer linen clothing and it was freezing when they released me in January.”
“A small pond used to be here. I served as an altar-boy and therefore I was going to the church in the morning and then to school after the mass. Many times, when my schoolmates walked to school, they would take a dip in the pond. Even in winter. They would then dry their clothes over our stove.”
Jiří Šoustar was born in 1925 in Horní Bobrová in the centre of the Czech-Moravian Highland. He has been a member of Sokol and Boy Scouts since his childhood, and he also served as an altar-boy in the church of St. Petr and Paul which was located only a few steps from his home. After the death of his father in 1950 he decided to study in order to become a priest. He was however arrested shortly after and in a politically motivated trial accused of involvement in an anti-state group and sentenced to two and a half years of imprisonment. He spent a year and a half in prison in Uherské Hradiště and in the labour camp in the uranium mines Mariánská before he was released in amnesty. He and his wife now still live in his native house.
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