Adolf Švadlenka

* 1929

  • “We were playing ice hockey on a frozen pond with friends from Mikulovice. A guy approached us from the dam of the pond and he asked where Mr. Švadlenka lived. Milan pointed at me that I was Mr. Švadlenka’s son. The guy introduced himself as Josef Krejča from Trávná. We had relatives with the same surname who lived in that village. I knew that certain Mr. Krejča was my uncle, but I have never seen him. I then led this man to our house.”

  • “Mom told me: ‘Áda, it’s obvious that the Gestapo did something to him.’ Then she gave me dad’s clothes for him and sent me to find out what had happened. I arrived to the Gestapo in Pardubice. The wardens immediately asked me what I brought. ‘Clothes for my dad. My name is Švadlenka,’ I told them. They began searching if a man with this name was there. Then they brought him to the gatehouse. I thought that I would start crying. Dad looked completely different from how I had remembered him. The interrogations were apparently very tough for him. He was beaten and he has lost a good ten kilograms of his weight.”

  • “I used to go to Blížňovice for summer holidays to my grandparents. I had a great friend there, Josef Matoušek. Dad would always tell me: ‘Don’t you even think about lazing around while you are there. You need to help them.’ The grandparents had a field, about two and a half hectares. I was working together with them. We had to walk forty-five minutes to get there! They had to explain everything to me, I did not even know how to hold a rake properly.”

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Adolf, don’t make trouble! It’s enough that your dad has been in the bourgeoisie resistance movement.

Photo of Adolf Švadlenka Jr.
Photo of Adolf Švadlenka Jr.

Adolf Švadlenka Jr. was born March 21, 1929 in Blížňovice. He learnt the lathe man‘s trade, after the war he studied a secondary technical school and then he began working as a design engineer in Semtín. He was the son of Adolf Švadlenka, a significant supporter of the paratrooper group SILVER A and an important figure in the resistance movement in the Pardubice region. Three years after Adolf‘s birth his younger sister Marie was born. Adolf‘s father became a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party in 1934 and in the following year he started doing a side job as a driver for the Social Democratic parliament deputy Bohumil Laušman apart from his regular work in the Explosia company. Laušman emigrated to England at the beginning of the war and he immediately became politically engaged there. Paratroopers in England were being provided with contact addresses of persons to whom they could turn for help in the Protectorate, and Švadlenka, Adolf‘s father, was prominently included among them. At the end of 1941 he was contacted by paratrooper Valčík. In 1942 he was arrested by the Gestapo and after a week of interrogations and torture he was executed. Memories of his father form a significant part of Adolf Švadlenka Jr.‘s life.