Many Czechs never returned from Volhynia
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Jaroslav Sodomek was born on 29 November 1937 in the village of Krasilno in the Dubensky District of Volhynia formerly in Poland (now Ukraine) as the elder of two children to parents Antonín and Antonie, née Najmanová. In Volhynia, he witnessed atrocities committed by the Banderites and the murders of Jews, and several of his relatives were murdered by the Nazis in Český Malín. His father and several uncles fought in the ranks of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps. In 1947, the family emigrated to Czechoslovakia and settled in the village of Rapotín in the Šumperk District. His parents were forced to join a farming cooperative (JZD) and surrender their farmland during the collectivisation period. Jaroslav Sodomek trained as an electrician from 1952 to 1954 and then worked at the Šumperk branch of Středomoravské energetické závody (power distribution company). Aside from two years of military service, he stayed with the company until retirement. He obtained secondary education from an evening technical school and worked as a manager of a district service centre for twenty-five years. He never joined the Communist Party but was monitored by the State Security from 1977 to 1980 as a person under investigation. His sister Lenka had married Richard Langr, a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, and followed him to Darmstadt. In 1960, Jaroslav Sodomek married Jindřiška Krmelová and they raised three children. In 1976, he built a family house in Šumperk where he was living at the time of filming in 2023.
