I felt ashamed in front of my friends in the cell for the fact that I had only gotten 10 years in prison
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Jiří Roček was born on July 24, 1924, in Přeštice. He grew up in Pilsen in Petrohrad, where he joined the Boy Scouts. He completed an apprenticeship in the Škoda factory as a machine fitter and worked there until the end of the Second World War. In September 1946, he started military service in Vimperk but soon fell ill with paralysis. After he had recovered, he was discharged from the army and began working as a driver for the West Bohemian power plant, where he worked until May 1949. Then he changed to the Mototechna Company. On May 27, 1950, he was arrested by the State Security for espionage. He supplied a western agent code-named Swallow - a friend from the Scout - with information about the ammunition depot in Vimperk and electric power networks of the Západočeské power plants. In December 1950, he was sentenced by the Regional Court in Prague to 10 years in prison for espionage. He served his term in the camps Brotherhood Vykmanov, Svatopluk, Barbora, Mariánská, Edvard, Nikolaj in the Jáchymov and Slavkov region. In May 1956, he was conditionally released. He then worked as a driver for the District Construction Company of Pilsen and since 1960 as a handyman and driver of a trolleybus of the Public Transportation of the City of Pilsen. In 1990, he co-founded the Confederation of Political Prisoners in Pilsen.
