They tied me to bed and beat me unconscious. Then they electrocuted me.
Stáhnout obrázek
Bohumil Zhof was born on 1 January 1928 in the village of Hovězí in the Vsetín region. His mother Anna, née Koňaříková, worked as a midwife, his father Teodor as a worker in glassworks. During the war years, the family‘s farm, which they lost after the Communists took power, helped the family to survive. Between 1946 and 1948 Bohumil trained as a shop assistant. Bohumil was an active member of Sokol and Orel, and continued to meet with the Orel members after February 1948. He also participated in the distribution of anti-communist leaflets. In December 1948, he was arrested, interrogated and tortured by the State Secret Police (StB) and subsequently sentenced to a year and a half in a heavy prison for the crime of preparing a state plot. He served his sentence in the uranium mines in the Jáchymov region. After his release in 1951, he served two years of forced labour in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP) at the Dukla coal mine in the Karviná region. Then he worked at Dukla for another three years. In 1956, under threat of further persecution, the State Secret Police forced him to sign a cooperation agreement. In the same year he returned to his native Vsetín region. He married Marie, née Štrbíková, a political prisoner sentenced to 12 years. At the time of the interview (2019), he was living in his native village of Hovězí. Bohumil Zhof died on 27 March 2022.
