Among the avengers
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Michal Legdan was born on 20 June 1939 in the village of Zboj in north-eastern Slovakia as one of ten children of Ondřej and Marie Legdan. His father died when he was three years old. His native region suffered greatly during the war, and so in November 1945 the Catholic Charity organised the transport of some fifteen children from Zboj into foster care in Bohemia and Moravia - including six-year-old Michal and his three years older brother Stanislav. They were taken in by the childless couple Vojtěch and Agnes Tobiáš in Lichnov. During the agricultural collectivisation, the Tobiášes were forced and bullied into joining the local united agricultural cooperative, and Michal Legdan was denied university studies despite successfully passing the entrance exams. In 1956 the witness joined the resistance group Mstitelé Milady Horákové (Avengers of Milada Horáková; a female politician infamously executed by the Communists - trans.), who strived to overthrow the regime. He collected and distributed seditious leaflets, he obtained bullets for the group, as well as new members. However, the leader of the Avengers, Jan Vaněk, also undertook several robberies with alternating members of the group. One of these robberies, undertaken by Jan Vaněk and Miroslav Kašpárek, ended with the death of almost eighty-year-old Jana Maralíková. Michal Legdan had no idea about these activities and he heard about them for the first time when he was placed on trial and sentenced to ten years of prison. He was released by amnesty in 1968. The leader of the group, Jan Vaněk, was hanged at Pankrác Prison on 3 July 1963. After his release Michal Legdan worked in the coal mines in Karviná. He lives in Karviná.
