“Gottwald and such people grabbed power and obviously, the resistance was against them. We went to protest in front of the president’s office at the castle. Gottwald was supported by the Soviet Union and the KGB. Us students went to the castle but there the secret police and the communists started beating us up. They arrested the boys and that was bad – it was 1948, after all. I couldn’t have stayed here. I had to flee because there was an arrest warrant issued against me and they wanted to imprison me.”
„The coup was on Friday and they came to arrest me on Monday. But I was warned, so I escaped. I became friends with Severin's wife, and Severin was the chief SS man in North Moravia. And I met her when I was going for a walk with my daughter in my carriage, and she was going there with her carriage, and she just told me all about it. She even copied and brought me the Communist arrest papers. Even before the coup there were these lists of who was going to be arrested, that was back in December."
“They wanted to have me arrested. I found out about it because I became friends with the wife of Mr. Severin who was the head of the secret police in North Moravia. She told me plenty of things. She herself was not a communist. She told me I was about to be arrested and all that. She even told me which other people were to be arrested and even photocopied and brought me the lists drafted by the Communist Party already ahead of the February putsch. This enabled me to warn lots of people about the imminence of an arrest. I was about to be arrested and so was my dad and my mum but not my brother.”
“No. The smuggler accompanied us only on the way to the border. We had to cross it on our own. It was fine since we walked past a customs house, knowing one thing. The ground was secure there, there weren’t any mines. Why? Because the dogs were running around. So, it was cool. We were most afraid of those underground mines. This is where we crossed over.”
Professor Leopold Pospíšil was born on 26 April 1923 in Olomouc. His father Leopold was an attorney, his mother Ludmila a painter. His father was an active member of the sports club Sokol and following the German occupation became active in the resistance. In 1939 he was arrested and spent the war in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. After graduating from a grammar school in 1942, Leopold took up work at a farm in Vojnice near Olomouc in order to avoid forced labor. He also joined the resistance. In 1945 he began studying at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague and became an active member of the Social Democrats. In 1948 he took part in the student march in support of president Beneš and against the communist putsch. Fleeing a possible arrest, he and his wife immigrated to Germany in March 1948, leaving their 2-year-old daughter behind in Czechoslovakia. Since 1949 he has lived in the US where he studied sociology, philosophy and anthropology. The latter he lectured at Yale University up until 1993. His academic focus is on legal anthropology on which he published extensively. Ever since 1989 he has been visiting the Czech Republic on a regular basis, and lecturing there. In 2013 he was awarded the City of Olomouc Prize.
