Ladislav Sukop

* 1933

  • “The period following 1948 was full of leaflets, young people distributed them, but I served at the altar at church and the priest asked me if I would distribute pastoral letters. I didn’t really understand things much at the time, but I agreed, and so it became known of me and I was assigned certain parish houses.”

  • “We are sending our assessment of Ladislav Sukop, both he and his family have a dated style of living, in the manner of the clerical party, but otherwise he has a quiet and calm nature, and he enjoys playing theatre.”

  • “I was a Scout, a romantic, and we was raised to be brave, and this was necessary, so I deemed it right to help a fugitive and also to distribute leaflets, so this was all a matter of course.”

  • “There was an agent active in the area, and he instigated one of our neighbours to set fire to a stack of straw, which was punished very harshly back then. That stack of straw landed him with twenty years.”

  • “During football an ambulance drove up, and I was asked to go with the men for a check-up in Uherské Hradiště, and when I got inside the ambulance, I realised they were taking me to prison. And that’s how it was, and when we got there they tried to persuade me to give up the whereabouts of Hochman.”

  • “When we did holiday jobs, I repaired lots of crosses, so that was our political activity. They didn’t punish us for that any more, they just suffered that in silence.”

  • “I graduated in fifty-two, and that’s as far as I got because I was arrested at that time, I had already been living illegally for almost five years, I had distributed pastoral letters, hid the fugitive Jan Hochman, and I also took him from hideout to hideout, before they locked me up, and him about half a year later.”

  • “There were four of us in Hradiště, and there was also one Communist officer there, who confiscated people’s things, and he had mental problems.”

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    Kyjov-Boršov, 10.09.2014

    (audio)
    duration: 01:02:46
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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It was my duty to help a friend

Sukop- dobová fotka.JPG (historic)
Ladislav Sukop

Ladislav Sukop was born on 11 April 1933 in Kyjov-Boršov. While attending grammar school in Kyjov he participated in the post-1949 activities of the illegal anti-Communist organisation Zvon (Bell) via his friend Jan Hochman, a carpenter from Boršov. The group’s main activity was the distribution of leaflets with Catholic themes. Ladislav Sukop personally received and distributed leaflets and pastoral letters from Jan Hochman three or four times. In spring 1951 the organisation was betrayed and Jan Hochman was under threat of arrest. Ladislav Sukop helped him to find shelter - for more than six months from August 1951 he hid in the house of the witness’s aunt. Ladislav Sukop supported his friend during this time and regularly supplied him with information. He also tried to help him cross the borders into Austria, but this failed. Ladislav Sukop was arrested on 14 August 1953 based on the testament of people under the suspicion of having sheltered Jan Hochman. On 7 December 1953 the People’s Tribunal in Kyjov sentenced Sukop, as a juvenile, to eighteen months in prison for the crime of seditious association and favouritism. After his release Ladislav Sukop returned to Kyjov-Boršov, where he lives to this day.