Jiří Roček

* 1924  †︎ unknown

  • "We were escorted back to our cell. My friends - there were six of them - rushed to me, they were terribly curious: 'How many years did you get? How long a sentence did you get?' I was ashamed that I only got ten years. I didn't dare to tell them. But they urged on me, I finally succumbed and I told them that I got ten years. It ended as I had imagined. My friends turned away from me as if I was a mangy dog and they said: 'You're no spy! You got ten years because you stole dog food. That's what they give ten years for and not for spying'."

  • "They'd take you out of the cell and wrap a wet towel around your head, covering your eyes and tightening it properly in the back. You were put to sit on a chair by the stove, you were leaning against the central heating. As the towel was drying it caused you an unimaginable pain."

  • "We'd pass our espionage reports to an agent. His code name was Swallow. (What kind of reports was it?) On my part, it was relatively easy. I gave him information on the location of an ammunition depot of the military unit in Vimperk where I had served, its location and a sketch. The second thing was the networks of the Západočeské power plants."

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    Plzeň, 31.03.2014

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    duration: 03:30:09
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I felt ashamed in front of my friends in the cell for the fact that I had only gotten 10 years in prison

Jiří Roček after release from prison
Jiří Roček after release from prison
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jiří Roček was born on July 24, 1924, in Přeštice. He grew up in Pilsen in Petrohrad, where he joined the Boy Scouts. He completed an apprenticeship in the Škoda factory as a machine fitter and worked there until the end of the Second World War. In September 1946, he started military service in Vimperk but soon fell ill with paralysis. After he had recovered, he was discharged from the army and began working as a driver for the West Bohemian power plant, where he worked until May 1949. Then he changed to the Mototechna Company. On May 27, 1950, he was arrested by the State Security for espionage. He supplied a western agent code-named Swallow - a friend from the Scout - with information about the ammunition depot in Vimperk and electric power networks of the Západočeské power plants. In December 1950, he was sentenced by the Regional Court in Prague to 10 years in prison for espionage. He served his term in the camps Brotherhood Vykmanov, Svatopluk, Barbora, Mariánská, Edvard, Nikolaj in the Jáchymov and Slavkov region. In May 1956, he was conditionally released. He then worked as a driver for the District Construction Company of Pilsen and since 1960 as a handyman and driver of a trolleybus of the Public Transportation of the City of Pilsen. In 1990, he co-founded the Confederation of Political Prisoners in Pilsen.