“From my head it was just over half a meter from my head. In the courtyard behind the cell window. At four in the morning I heard banging wood and guessed they were building a stage for the gallows. An intuitive but totally correct guess. I don’t know whether the others in my cell were up too, but I heard everything. I pretended to be asleep but my heart was beating crazy. The guard in the corridor watched every five minutes with the spy in the doorway, whether we were awake and what we were doing. And as soon as the stage was up, then gradually they were bringing prisoners. They were four of them and they executed them right under our heads.“
"No emotions existed. Emotions are luxury. A prisoner can not have any emotions, otherwise he would not survive. If he was just kep sitting and weeping or if he was depressed. I was a young guy and I took it all in a sports way. We had little food, so I learned to eat little. That I lost my weight so that my mother did not recognize me in court, that was a simple fact. No emotions would change that. "
“From the street someone was beating at the windows. My father leaned out asking what was going on. ‚We are looking for Josef Svoboda.‘ And he replied: ‚I am Josef Svoboda.‘ But they were looking for the young one. Asked where his son lived. So he opened the door, they rushed into my small room, pointed a revolver at me and asked, where my gun was.“
“Interrogation began by the secret police asking me: ‚So what are you going to tell us? What do you say?‘ I was a big hero and replied: ‚What you know I say. What you dont know I won´t.‘ They began to laugh terribly and called another one to tell him what I just said. ‚So I will show you now, you big hero,‘ one of them said. ‚Can you see the keys here? They would really fit in your teeth, do you get it?‘“
Josef Svoboda was born on 16 July, 1929 in Prague. His father came from Brno, his mother from Teplice and they lived in Kralupy nad Vltavou, where his father worked as an engine driver. In 1938 the family moved to Brno and Josef started to attend the Scouts. At the same time he witnessed the clash in the family between Czech and German relatives on his father´s part. At the end of war he experienced bombing of Brno. In spring 1945 the family escaped from the liberation fights to their relatives in Vysočina and came back in May. Josef Svoboda witnessed the deportation of his aunt and other Germans from Brno in so called Pohořelice death march. In 1948 despite difficulties got to study philosophy and natural science at the Masaryk university in Brno. In September 1949 he was arrested by the state police and in 1951 sentenced to 11 years in prison. He worked in uranium mines for almost five years. In 1958 Josef Svoboda was deprived of all accusations by the court and the punishment was cancelled. Following the 1968 invasion he immigrated to Canada, studied high school and became a professor at the Toronto university. He devoted himself to botanic and ecologic research in polar areas of the Arctic and published in renowned magazines and won prestigious awards. Josef Svoboda died in November 2022.
The cassette of bread made by Josef Svoboda, who made it with a sharpened spoon in Znojmo prison and decorated with pallet straw / stained with a methylene blue tablet, which was a common cure for infections
The cassette of bread made by Josef Svoboda, who made it with a sharpened spoon in Znojmo prison and decorated with pallet straw / stained with a methylene blue tablet, which was a common cure for infections
Alena Šedová / right / widow of a fellow prisoner, Milan Šeda / with Milada Svrčinová, who communicated from window to the window with Josef Svoboda and other prisoners in his cell / December 1996
Alena Šedová / right / widow of a fellow prisoner, Milan Šeda / with Milada Svrčinová, who communicated from window to the window with Josef Svoboda and other prisoners in his cell / December 1996
A co-prisoner of Josef Svoboda, a priest, Antonín Bradna, after being released from prison was employed only in working-class professions / Prague - Prosek / 1966
A co-prisoner of Josef Svoboda, a priest, Antonín Bradna, after being released from prison was employed only in working-class professions / Prague - Prosek / 1966
Josef Svoboda (standing left) as a technician of the Botanical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Brno for the Research of South Moravian Wetlands / 1966
Josef Svoboda (standing left) as a technician of the Botanical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Brno for the Research of South Moravian Wetlands / 1966
The northernmost station of the Canadian Riding Police in the Alexandria Fjord on Ellesmere Island. The station was lent to the research group of Josef Svoboda from 1980 to 1986
The northernmost station of the Canadian Riding Police in the Alexandria Fjord on Ellesmere Island. The station was lent to the research group of Josef Svoboda from 1980 to 1986
Polar researchers of the Toronto University in front of a common residential parcoll in the Svedrufo Pass on Ellesmer Island / from the left, a Swiss, Martin Raillard, Josef Svoboda and Canadians Janine Murray, Tim Thurston and Tom Daly
Polar researchers of the Toronto University in front of a common residential parcoll in the Svedrufo Pass on Ellesmer Island / from the left, a Swiss, Martin Raillard, Josef Svoboda and Canadians Janine Murray, Tim Thurston and Tom Daly
The northernmost islands of the Canadian archipelago with Resolute, Eureka and Alert bases and research sites: Lowland Truelov, Alexandrina fjord, Svedrup Pass and Lake Hazen / Josef and his team of co-workers dedicated themselves to field research
The northernmost islands of the Canadian archipelago with Resolute, Eureka and Alert bases and research sites: Lowland Truelov, Alexandrina fjord, Svedrup Pass and Lake Hazen / Josef and his team of co-workers dedicated themselves to field research
