„People should get back to reason and wake up...“
Bedřich Polák was born on 28th February in 1920 in Olomouc. His father was a gardener; his mother took care about household. Polák visited local elementary school, later he studied at high school. He wanted to become a forester and he left the high school after four years. His uncle, a winemaker living in Yugoslavia, offered him a job in his winery facility with a perspective he would become the owner of the facility in the future. Polák left for Yugoslavia at the age of 17. International politics was worsening rapidly in those days, so Polák had decided to return home in September 1938. During the mobilization he had patrolled the railway line Hanušovice - Jeseník as a member of The Scout Boy Movement. During the occupation he found a job at a farm of a relative. But he got seriously ill and was hospitalized. This helped him to avoid a forced labor deployment in the Third Reich which was a common practice for the youth. Until the end of 1940 Polák had been helping his father in The Botanical Garden of Olomouc where he had sorted seeds. Later he moved to Prague in the company Obilosvaz. From there he was replaced to south Bohemia as a controller.
From the very beginning of the Second World War Polák had been involved in the resistance movement. After he moved to Ostrava he joined a resistance group called Slezsky Junák led by Vladimír Čermák. Polák's role was to carry messages, to collect food coupons, and to report on food supplies under control of the Ministry of Agriculture. He was detained on the 5th of April in 1945 in Ostrava after the group was betrayed. He eluded the capital punishment because the war was coming to an end and the Gestapo officers needed detainees to shred documents. Polak was very soon released. From 1950 he had lived in Opava with his family. After the war he had worked as a controller in The Ministry of Agriculture. From year 2002 he has lived in Krnov as a pensioner.
