When I heard one communist fellow talking to my neighbor I told to myself : Just wait you old man, I´ll show you something!
Download image
Mr. Josef Lněnička was born on April 11th 1930 in Budislav village nearby Litomyšl town. His father owned a butcher shop there. Josef, who was an avid boy scout and reader of the legionnaires literature also trained to be a butcher. At the end of 1948 when one of his friends got released from prison (he has been jailed for few weeks for sedition and insulting the USSR) he and few other young people established anti communist group. Inspired by foreign radio they started to write and publish anti communist leaflets and planned actions in order to intimidate the local communist officials which forced small farmers to set up cooperatives and were harassing the non communist in many other ways. This group was unaware of any conspiracy principals though and its actions were often lousy performed and improvised. After few actions when Mr. Lněnička scared away some communist officials with the gun in his hand or by firing into the dark, one of his friends also wanted to get a gun and robbed the post office in Budislav village. During the subsequent investigation and thank to one of the group members the whole group has been revealed and all its members were arrested by the StB (former communist state secret police - translator´s note). Unlike the members of the group, the police didn´t underestimate anything and considered that there really is professional destructive group in the region. The following year 19 people who were involved in the case in different ways found themselves in Litomyšl town court. There were often people who refused to give information on their friends. Also four adolescent were prosecuted in this case. Josef Lněnička, who was then 19 years old, was convicted of treason to twenty years in prison. He served almost eight years before he was conditionally released in 1957. He went through the toughest prisons of that time. After the remand in Pardubice town and the custody in Chrudim town he went through Bory, Mírov, Valdice, Ilava and Leopoldov prisons. On his final prison stint he worked as a miner in the Tmavý důl in Rtyně coal mine in Giant Mountains. In 1968 he left to Vienna and later returned back home via Switzerland. He emigrated again in 1981, this time to the USA, where he lives until these days.
