Evžen Seidel

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Evžen Seidl was born on October 28, 1928 in Černčice near Louny. His father was involved in the anti-Nazi struggle during the war and worked as a train driver for the railways. He brought up his son in the Masaryk spirit. During the war, Evžen Seidl trained as a toolmaker at the railway school and helped his father in the resistance by running small errands. After the war he studied geology. After 1948 the whole extended family was persecuted by the communists. After the February 1948 communist coup, Evžen Seidl joined the resistance group MAPAŽ 5, which was affiliated with the CIC. After the 1948 elections, a group in the North Bohemian region sprayed a red claw symbol on public buildings along with the slogan “If it seizes you, you will perish.” They also submitted around 30,000 letters to the American embassy requesting that the elections be repeated under international supervision and that the country join the Marshall Plan. Most notably, the group MAPAŽ 5 carried out five bomb attacks aimed at intimidating certain high-ranking members of the Communist Party (KSČ) and State Security (StB) officers in the region. No one was killed in the attacks. Evžen Seidl gathered pipes for the bombs in workshops. The group also organized escapes across the border into Germany, near Želnava in South Bohemia, helping persecuted individuals. Seidl himself helped fugitives, as he lived above a pub in Černčice, where escapees could discreetly spend the night. In 1949, the group from Louny was exposed by Emil André, a hairdresser caught at the border when returning to Czechoslovakia. Evžen Seidl was arrested in July. He was brutally interrogated for three months by the StB in Ústí nad Labem, then transferred to the Litoměřice prison. On October 22, 1949, a show trial was held in the Sokol Hall in Louny with 23 members of the group. Four men were sentenced to death and executed. The remaining 19 members from Louny, Vinařice, Telce, Černčice, and Lenešice were sentenced to a total of 254 years in prison. Only one person was acquitted. Because Seidl was not yet of legal age (21) at the time of the trial, the proposed death sentence was replaced by 20 years in prison. After sentencing, he was sent to Bory Prison in Plzeň, where he worked in the leather-sewing department. Later, he was transferred to uranium labor camps, first to Camp Prokop, then to Rovnost, where he worked as a geologist, prospecting for uranium veins. Seidl was released during the May amnesty in 1960. He found work at a porcelain factory, assigned to mechanical maintenance, where he remained for 33 years, until retirement. He lived under constant StB surveillance. After 1989, he became an honorary citizen of Louny and secretary of the Louny branch of the Confederation of Political Prisoners (KPV). Evžen Seidl died on January 17, 2017.