Ladislav Stromček

* 1960  †︎ 2021

  • “I called a news report to Anton Hlinka and as I hung up the phone, some men pounced on me yelling: 'The State Security, you shall come with us!' So they arrested me, took my stuff, evidence, texts, notebook, where the text of the report was, and also the dictaphone, where it was recorded. They had the evidence in their hands. They took me to the Bratislava remand centre (called Februárka), where the investigation began. They threatened me with 15 years of imprisonment for espionage to the benefit of Vatican and western, ideologically diversionary offices.”

  • “The question was, from where to call, because if I made the phone call from the flat, they would have immediately found out. This is how Ján Čarnogurský used to call, as he didn´t care anymore, he didn´t have a reason to hide it, so when he needed, he called from his flat. I worked undercover, so I always called from a different telephone booth, from a different street machine. I changed them and the best I liked to call from empty streets. This way I saw if someone was approaching or not. If someone was coming, I could always hang up and say I called to my grandma, since I never used to have any evidence with me. Not even a text as I talked by memory, so that they´d find nothing even if they pounced on me.”

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    Žilina, 24.02.2015

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    duration: 58:26
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It´s not only great people who move the history, but also the ones fulfilling their role of the given moment

Ladislav Stromcek
Ladislav Stromcek
photo: Osobný archív pamätníka

Ing. ThLic. Ladislav Stromček was born on February 3, 1960 in Dolný Kubín into a devoted Catholic family. Yet in his childhood he was considering a priestly vocation, however, he wasn´t accepted to a grammar school because of his strong Catholic faith. Such study was back then a requirement to enter the seminary. Later he found out about the so-called secret church, where priests could have performed their ministry besides a civil job. Therefore he decided to leave to Bratislava, where he was accepted at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. Here, in Bratislava he gained various contacts to the secret church. In his third year of study, also his secret theology studies began and gradually he got to know people as Bishop Ján Chryzostom Korec, Vladimír Jukl, Silvester Krčméry, František Mikloško, and others. At the discretion of Bishop Korec he began to deliver telephone messages abroad, precisely to Anton Hlinka to the Voice of America and to the Free Europe. During one of such telephone calls he was caught out, arrested and investigated by the State Security. Nevertheless, he also took part in issuing samizdat literature; a magazine Náboženstvo a súčasnosť (Religion and Present) in cooperation with F. Mikloško, and a youth magazine Zrno (The Grain). He finished his university studies in 1984 and for a year he was drafted to the military service. After he returned in 1985, he found a civil job and secretly finished his theology studies. In 1988 the Bishop Ján Chryzostom Korec secretly ordained him a priest in his apartment. Since 1990 he works in Žilina, today even as the Vicar General of the Žilina diocese.