“People should get back to reason and wake up...”
Bedřich Polák was born on 28th February in 1920 in Olomouc. His father was a gardener; his mother took care about household. Polák attended local elementary school, later he studied in high school. He wanted to become a forester and he left the high school after four years. His uncle, a winemaker living in Yugoslavia, offered him a job in his winery facility with a prospect of becoming the owner of the facility in the future. Polák left for Yugoslavia at the age of 17. International politics were worsening rapidly in those days, so Polák decided to return home in September 1938. During the mobilization of troops on both sides, he had patrolled the railway line from Hanušovice to Jeseník as a member of The Boy Scouts Movement. During the occupation he found a job at a farm of a relative. But he became seriously ill and was hospitalized. This helped him to avoid a forced labor deployment in the Third Reich, which was a common practice for the youth. Until the end of 1940 Polák had been helping his father in the Botanical Gardens of Olomouc where he had sorted seeds. Later he moved to Prague in the company Obilosvaz. From there he was replaced to south Bohemia as a controller. From the very beginning of the Second World War Polák had been involved in the resistance movement. After he moved to Ostrava he joined a resistance group called Slezsky Junák led by Vladimír Čermák. Polák’s role was to carry messages, to collect food coupons, and to report on food supplies under control of the Ministry of Agriculture. He was detained on the 5th of April in 1945 in Ostrava after his group was betrayed. He eluded capital punishment because the war was coming to an end and Gestapo officers needed detainees to shred documents. Polak was soon after released. From 1950 on, he lived in Opava with his family. After the war he again worked as a controller in The Ministry of Agriculture. From 2002 he to today he lives in Krnov as a hotel operator.