Vladislav Sysel

* 1922  †︎ 2019

  • “(State police –editor´s note) let me stay at home. But the next morning there was the holy mass around eight o´clock. It took place in the church of Kralovice. And after that they came in the sacristy and said I had to go to Pilsen with them without any delay. I returned to the parish. I took all the stuff, toothbrush and toiletries. And they drove me to Pilsen prison, where I had my first lunch.“

  • „Always in autumn (in the prison of Mírov – editor´s note) they brought fruits. They were selling and offering apples, pears, grapes. When we found out there were wine grapes each prisoner was ordered to buy as much as possible. So we were buying out those grapes and giving them to a certain prisoner. He squeezed them in a water jar and let them ferment. After a while he drained them. According to church catechism as soon as the raisins began to ferment, it was a valid matter meaning it was good enough to get served as a mass wine. So we did that, to let the raisins ferment in the jars. Then we distributed it to medicine tubes and hid it under the floor in our cells. Each Saturday we were distributing it. Whoever needed any got a tube or two. That had to be hidden in the pallet. That was used as our mass wine.“

  • “In our borderland there was much trains-stock carriage engaged by the prisoners in Auschwitz. They wanted to place them somewhere here. Some jumped out of trains and hid in the forest. Once we came back home and I came back from work from the railway station in Domažlice, an in our garden there was a prisoner, who ran out of the train. So we gave him some older civilian clothes. I think he slept over in the stables for several nights. But then he got scared; if the Germans came and found him (with us – editor´s note), they would execute him straight away. Therefore he wanted to sleep in the woods. And we agreed. He found a thick place there with much branches and little rain for as a shelter at night. That is where he slept. We used to bring him food. So we saved him.“

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    Kdyně, 18.03.2017

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Twelve years for sending a package for a cousin

portret.jpg (historic)
Vladislav Sysel
zdroj: Eva Palivodová

Mons. Vladislav Sysel was born on 30 April, 1922 in Libkov near Kdyně. He came from a multiple family with eleven siblings. His parents worked at the village farm. He attended elementary school in Loučim and then studied gymnasium in Domažlice. Following graduation in 1942 he attended clerical seminar in Dolní Břežany. In January 1943 the working office sent him to forced deployment to Germany. He worked at the Reich railway first as an external switch-man at the Berlín-Rummelsburg railway station. After a year and half in Berlin he managed to get transferred to protectorate and worked as a manual worked at the loading railway station in Prague-Žižkov and then began to train as a dispatcher in Domažlice. After the WW2 was finished he shortly studied medicine and since December 1945 until June 1949 studied theology at the Theological faculty of the Charles university in Prague. In June 1949 the eminent bishop, Antonín Eltschkner, consecrated him to priest and in August Vladislav Sysel became a chaplain in Kralovice. In the Western Czech town he was active side by side with his cousin, a priest, Jaroslav Kubovec. Yet he escaped in September from the threat of imprisonment to the Western Germany. About a month later the witness was contacted by couriers, who brought him his cousin´s letter asking to send his passport and other stuff. The witness agreed to send all materials along with some money. The transfer group was revealed by the secret police and during interrogation also the name of Vladislav Sysel was mentioned. In August 1949 the secret police arrested him and after a half a year of interrogations in custody he was sentenced by the state court of justice in Prague to twelve years in prison for the crime of treason. He spent ten years in the Mírov prison. He was only released in 1960 during amnesty. Later he worked in the state farm in Kout in Šumava and Kdyně machine factory, where he stayed until retirement in 1983. During the Prague spring he co-founded K 231 in Domažlice and was active as a club secretary. During normalisation he was once again monitored by the state police that persecuted him and regularly interrogated too. For many years the witness kept asking for the state approval for execution of clerical activities. Quite unexpectedly he got it only in 1989, when the church secretary made him an administrator of the parishes in Dlažov, Bezděkov, Chudenice and Poleň. Following the velvet revolution the witness improved the Czech and German relations and renewed the traditions of holy pilgrimages of the Virgen Mary of Loučim to the Bavarian town of Neukirchen beim Heiligen Blut. In 1994-2002 he worked as regional vicar of the Klatovy vicariate. Nowadays he is retired and lives in Kdyně.