František Zahrádka (30 October 1930 – 15 December 2017) was a Czech resistance fighter. He was an active member of the Resistance against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

Biography

Early life

František Zahrádka was born on 30 October 1930 in

Děčín Děčín (; ) is a city in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 46,000 inhabitants. It is the seventth largest municipality in the country by area. Děčín is an important traffic junction. Administrative division Děč ...

, Czechoslovakia to an assistant worker, his mother Kristýna, and an Army veteran, his father František. He attended grammar school in Meziměstí with his brother, Luděk. In 1938, his family was driven out of their home by Germans. Many tragedies befell his family and him before World War II. His father's job transferred him to the Svitavy region. His brother was hit by a car and because of this his mother had a mental breakdown. Since all of this happened, Zahrádka lived in an old railway car. Right before the war broke out, his aunt invited him to live with her in Veselí nad Lužnicí where he saw the beginning of the war. He lived with his aunt in

Veselí nad Lužnicí Veselí nad Lužnicí (; ) is a town in Tábor District in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 6,500 inhabitants. It lies at the confluence of the Lužnice and Nežárka rivers. Administrative division Veselí nad Luž ...

. After the

assassination of Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Heydrich, the commander of the German Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the acting governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a principal architect of the Holocaust, was assassinated during the Second World War in a coordin ...

, Zahrádka was reunited with his family. In 1944, his parents were arrested by the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

and they both returned alive near the end of the war. The boy scouts,

Junák Junák – český skaut (''Junák – Czech Scouting''), is the internationally recognized organization of Scouts and Guides of the Czech Republic. Founded in 1911, Junák – český skaut is the largest organisation of children and youth in ...

, were re-established after World War II, which Zahrádka immediately joined in

České Budějovice České Budějovice (; ) is a city in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 97,000 inhabitants. The city is located in the valley of the Vltava River, at its confluence with the Malše. České Budějovice is the largest ...

Anti-communist resistance and later life

The communists took over the newly re-established Czechoslovakia in February 1948. This is when Zahrádka made the decision to join the Scout Resistance. He assisted in helping eleven people leave Czechoslovakia illegally. He also helped produce the illegal ''Za Pravdu'' magazine. He established contacts with the American Intelligence Service and helped them connect to the resistance network in Czechoslovakia. In September 1949, the

StB State Security (, ), or StB / ŠtB, was the secret police force in communist Czechoslovakia from 1945 to its dissolution in 1990. Serving as an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency, it dealt with any activity that was considered oppositio ...

arrested him for these activities. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison and required to pay a fine. He served part of his time in the uranium mines in

Jáchymov Jáchymov (; or ''Joachimsthal'') is a spa town in Karlovy Vary District in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,300 inhabitants. Jáchymov has a long mining tradition, thanks to which it used to be the second most popu ...

and other areas. He eventually went through eleven prisons and camps until his release in 1962. In April 1966, he married Marie Voldřichová. They stayed together until her death in 1999. He also founded his local chapter of the Confederation of Political Prisoners in 1990. Zahrádka died on 15 December 2017.

Legacy

Zahrádka helped build the Museum of the Third Resistance in

Příbram Příbram (; or ''Przibram'') is a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 33,000 inhabitants. It is known for its mining history, and more recently, its new venture into economic restructuring. The town is the t ...

and a memorial to the Victims of Communism in Vojna. He received the

Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk The Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk () is an order (decoration), Order of the Czech Republic and the former Czechoslovakia. It was established in 1990 after the Velvet Revolution, and re-established in 1994 (following the dissolution of Czechosl ...

for Lifetime Merit in 2007 by

Václav Klaus Václav Klaus (; born 19 June 1941) is a Czech economist and politician who served as the second president of the Czech Republic from 2003 to 2013. From July 1992 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in January 1993, he served as the second ...

. He also was awarded the Prize of the Nation. In the early 2000s, he was interviewed by the nonprofit

Post Bellum Post Bellum is a Czech educational nonprofit organization based in Prague. The organization was formed in 2001 by a group of historians and journalists with the aim of increasing public knowledge of the 20th century history of the Czech Republ ...

as part of their Iron Curtain Stories Project.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zahradka, Frantisek 1930 births 2017 deaths People from Děčín Czechoslovak dissidents Recipients of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk