"At first it was okay. Then I had to take off my shoes, there was an iron bed, they tied me to the bed with straps, even my arms. Then they took two batons and beat me unconscious on my heels."
"Then they started attacking those who had property, the merchants and those who had bigger farms, but it was still quite okay. It started with the liquidation of the associations, for example Orel, which was a major, strong association, oriented on both culture and physical education. So this was gone."
"Leaflets were sent to the village, not many people had a radio back then. And that's how we learnt about the Communists taking over. But people didn't worry much. They cared about their work and their fields. Everybody had a piece of field and they took care of it. Because that was the basic thing, that's what we lived on and that's how we got through the war without starving."
Bohumil Zhof was born on 1 January 1928 in the village of Hovězí in the Vsetín region. His mother Anna, née Koňaříková, worked as a midwife, his father Teodor as a worker in glassworks. During the war years, the family’s farm, which they lost after the Communists took power, helped the family to survive. Between 1946 and 1948 Bohumil trained as a shop assistant. Bohumil was an active member of Sokol and Orel, and continued to meet with the Orel members after February 1948. He also participated in the distribution of anti-communist leaflets. In December 1948, he was arrested, interrogated and tortured by the State Secret Police (StB) and subsequently sentenced to a year and a half in a heavy prison for the crime of preparing a state plot. He served his sentence in the uranium mines in the Jáchymov region. After his release in 1951, he served two years of forced labour in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP) at the Dukla coal mine in the Karviná region. Then he worked at Dukla for another three years. In 1956, under threat of further persecution, the State Secret Police forced him to sign a cooperation agreement. In the same year he returned to his native Vsetín region. He married Marie, née Štrbíková, a political prisoner sentenced to 12 years. At the time of the interview (2019), he was living in his native village of Hovězí. Bohumil Zhof died on 27 March 2022.
