I provided overnight shelter for CIC agent Richard Lederer
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Stanislav Šmic was born on 2 November 1927 in Tuchlovice. Until he was ten years old he lived in Belgium, mostly in Brussels, where both his parents worked. His mother was a cook, his father a clerk. They returned to Czechoslovakia because of the poor health of their only son. After the closure of the French municipal school in Prague at the beginning of the German occupation, Stanislav Šmic attended the grammar school in Žižkov, where he graduated in 1947. At that time, the family moved from Prague to Most due to his father’s job, where the young Šmic began working in the administration of the publishing house Práce, and also worked in Karlovy Vary and Cheb. In 1949, Stanislav Šmic provided overnight shelter for his former classmate Richard Lederer, who had illegally returned from abroad as a CIC agent. Šmic’s flat was also the venue for a meeting between Lederer and people who were seeking national economic information for him. Stanislav Šmic was arrested by State Security on 29 November 1949. The interrogations, using physical violence, took place in the Most prison. The public trial of a group of more than twenty people took place in the Sokol Hall in Chomutov and the verdict was pronounced on 22 July 1950. For association against the republic, treason and espionage, Stanislav Šmic was sentenced to twelve years’ hard imprisonment, forfeiture of personal property, a fine of 10,000 CZK and loss of civil rights for ten years. He saw his lawyer ex officio for the first time after the iverdict was read out. His father had a nervous breakdown after the verdict and ended up on disability. Stanislav Šmic began his sentence in the Most prison, and after a few months he was mining uranium in the Vojna camp in the Příbram region and the Rovnost camp in the Jáchymov region. He ended up in correction several times, and in July 1951 he witnessed a failed escape from the Vojna camp. He was released on parole on 20 December 1958 following the intervention of his uncle, a high-ranking Communist official. The remainder of his sentence was erased in May 1961, and two years later, in May 1963, he was given back his civil rights. He earned a living as a labourer in the coal mines of Most. It was only in the second half of the 1960s that he was able to graduate from a secondary technical school and change jobs. He worked in various technical positions in the ore mine in Měděnec until his retirement. After November 1989, Stanislav Šmic was fully rehabilitated.
