We were bothered by the apathetic public that didn’t realize what could follow
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Vilém Míchal was born May 27, 1932 in Brno. He lived through several Allied bombings of Brno from the late 1944 until the end of the war. During his Gymnasium studies he joined the anti-communist student resistance group ANNA, members of which didn’t want to just sit back and watch the republic turn into a totalitarian state after the communist coup d’état. Within the bounds of their possibilities, they made efforts to restore democracy and were alerting the apathetic citizens to the unfree conditions in Czechoslovakia. They printed posters, damaged boards of the Communist Party and put together lists of all active party members. After the group had been discovered, on March 19th, 1952 these seventeen young people were sent to prison for anti-state activity by the State Court in Brno. Five of them were still minors. Vilém Míchal was sentenced to one year in prison, time he then spent in various prisons and also by mining the deadly radioactive uranium ore in Jáchymov. After his release he had to join the army. He was put into the Auxiliary Technical Battalions and spent the following two years working in a coal mine in the Ostrava region. As a civilian, Vilém Míchal spent the rest of his active years working in building construction. He completed his graduate exam remotely and then applied for university. He was not accepted though, due to his negative political assessment. Shortly after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Vilém left for Vienna and for a long time hesitated whether to return home or emigrate. In the end he decided to stay for family reasons. In 2018 he lived in Olomouc.
