“The wife of a ‘spy.’”
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Jana Sléhová, the widow of a political prisoner, was born on September 30, 1927, in the family of a wood ranger, Jan Běhal. She became a seamstress and married Miloslav Sléha in 1949. They lived with their two daughters in Řitka near Prague. Miloslav Sléha worked as a lathe operator in a factory that produced aircraft engines in Jinonice. In 1952, he was approached by a colleague who asked him to pass on information about the manufacture to the West. Miloslav Sléha agreed and started to pass photocopies of jet engine designs and manufacturing procedures to a courier named Vlastimil Hájek. He continued to do so even after agent Hájek fled across the border and was replaced by another courier by the name of Otakar Kulendík. However, their activities were apparently controlled by the secret state police. Otakar Kulendík was the first one to be arrested on April 17, 1953. The arrest of Miloslav Sléha followed shortly afterwards. He spent one year in a pre-trial detention cell in a secret operative prison in the Dr. Zikmund Winter Street. After a couple of weeks, he was transferred to another detention prison in the Bartolomějská Street, where he was several times interrogated. He was accused of espionage and sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Higher military court of Prague on March 11, 1954. He witnessed the hell of the Jáchymov prison and was punished by being transferred to Leopoldov prison. As Miloslav Sléha died in 1998, his story was told by his wife Jana Sléhová. She suffered together with her husband during the tough years when he was imprisoned. She had to raise their two daughters on her own.
