I grew up in an anti-communist family
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Bohumír Vosáhlo was born on 26 May 1943 in Horní Bříza, Pilsen region. His father worked as a driver in the West Bohemian Ceramic Works, his mother as a secretary. He had no siblings. Vosáhlo grew up in an anti-communist family. After the Communists came to power, his two uncles were sentenced for political reasons and sent to the uranium mines in Jáchymov. From childhood, his parents regularly explained to him the falsity of the regime’s propaganda, listened to foreign radio, and collected and read anti-regime leaflets dropped on the territory of western Bohemia from Radio Free Europe balloons. After high school, he began studying at the Faculty of Education in Pilsen in the early 1960s, majoring in Czech language, history and music education, where he initiated the formation of an anti-state group. The seven-member group aimed to exert ideological influence on the population by distributing leaflets written by Vosáhlo. However, they never managed to acquire a cyclostyle, so only two hand-copied leaflets were produced, which the colporteurs distributed to military garrisons. The State Security soon became aware of their activity, and Bohumír Vosáhlo was arrested on 23 July 1962 during a student summer job. He was interrogated in Ruzyně for eight months. The interrogators did not use physical violence, but Vosáhlo had to endure the entire period of pre-trial detention in solitary confinement. Breathing exercises and memorising books borrowed from the prison library helped him cope with the isolation. The trial took place at the Regional Court in Pilsen in the spring of 1963. Vosáhlo was sentenced to 3.5 years’ imprisonment for his anti-state activities. He served his sentence in the Borey prison, where he strung beads. Thanks to fulfilling the standard and leading educational courses for prisoners with incomplete schooling and illiteracy, he was released after two years (in the summer of 1964) with a five-year probation. After returning from prison, he worked at the West Bohemian Ceramic Works, and in 1968, he took a position as a conductor with the Czechoslovak State Railways. During his employment, Bohumír Vosáhlo graduated from the secondary transport school, majoring in train dispatching. He held this position until 1974, when he moved with his second wife to Ústí nad Labem. He worked in a chemical plant until 2000, when he retired with a disability pension.
