“We took the oath on October 28th; I was still in the regular armed units at that time. I had been a regular soldier until they found out about it. (…) I am actually a PTP soldier who has done armed training. The ceremony on October 28th was already conducted in the style of the minister of defence Čepička, it was in a festive atmosphere, and all the officials were standing on a huge platform. A political officer climbed up to the speaker’s desk (…) and he was yelling at us about various subversive elements that have sneaked their way into the army and were trying to disrupt it from within, but although they are hiding behind their academic degrees, we shall unmask them, and we shall destroy them. I was standing three metres away from him. I received lunch, but immediately afterward my name was called out… and I was ordered to hand over my rifle, and from then on we were going to work to the train station where we were unloading apples from the Balkans from one train onto another. In this way we loafed away the entire November, and on November 30th I was already doing a miner’s work in the coal mines. I have to say that the work in the mines was a terrible training.”
“I would have tried to fly the coop only in case the situation would be too bad or my life was at risk. Otherwise I would not do it, because I would ruin the life of my sister and my parents. What should I do? Then the Holy Spirit probably spoke to me, because I realized: It will come to an end one day, anyway, but it would be stupid to get involved in sabotage which would threaten the country. The country will still be there even when the communists go to gas chambers, as was the saying at that time, and this was what eventually happened.”
“You will go to Moravská Třebová, I got stamped blank ID cards there for our resistance activities.’ I thus went there. I received the package, which was carefully wrapped, and this was to become a great advantage for me later. When they later arrested the guy, I claimed: ‘I don’t know anything, Karel Kašpárek only told me that I was to pick up something which he had kept in his classmate’s place.’ (…) When the StB police was interrogating me, they asked me: ‘What were you doing in Moravská Třebová?’ I claimed that I had never been there in my life. ‘Really? (…) And what about you stopping by in the national administration office there?’ Then I knew that things went wrong and that they had probably arrested him and he had told them everything.”
Ten Commandments is like a list of tasks, and people don’t like to hear what they must and must not do. But let us abide by this principle and then we will not fall down nor fly too far away
Bohumír Dufek was born in 1926 in Brno-Židenice. His father was a legionnaire and his mother was a housewife, who raised Bohumir and his sister. Bohumír attended grammar school during the war, and after the war began to study at the Law Faculty in Brno. At the same time he became a member of the People’s Party. He was dismissed from his job in the central administration authority of the City of Brno and was expelled from the University after the coup d’état in February 1948. Together with Karel Kašpárek, his friend from the university and a member of the People’s Party, he decided to become more engaged in the resistance. Dufek was later interrogated by the StB in relation to a package of blank and stamped ID cards, which he picked up for Kašpárek, but the StB was eventually unable to present evidence that the ID cards were indeed his. In 1950 he was drafted to the army where he was assigned to serve in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). Bohumír worked in coal mines in Ostrava and at various construction sites. When he finished his army service he began working in an Investment Bank. He was offered an opportunity to emigrate, but he refused because of his family. At present he is the deputy chairman of the Central Council of the PTP Union and an active member of the People’s Party. Bohumír Dufek died on 6 February 2019.
