Adolf, don’t make trouble! It’s enough that your dad has been in the bourgeoisie resistance movement.
Adolf Švadlenka Jr. was born March 21, 1929 in Blížňovice. He learnt the lathe man’s trade, after the war he studied a secondary technical school and then he began working as a design engineer in Semtín. He was the son of Adolf Švadlenka, a significant supporter of the paratrooper group SILVER A and an important figure in the resistance movement in the Pardubice region. Three years after Adolf’s birth his younger sister Marie was born. Adolf’s father became a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party in 1934 and in the following year he started doing a side job as a driver for the Social Democratic parliament deputy Bohumil Laušman apart from his regular work in the Explosia company. Laušman emigrated to England at the beginning of the war and he immediately became politically engaged there. Paratroopers in England were being provided with contact addresses of persons to whom they could turn for help in the Protectorate, and Švadlenka, Adolf’s father, was prominently included among them. At the end of 1941 he was contacted by paratrooper Valčík. In 1942 he was arrested by the Gestapo and after a week of interrogations and torture he was executed. Memories of his father form a significant part of Adolf Švadlenka Jr.’s life.
