In letters to Germany, he criticized the communist regime, was sentenced to three years
Stáhnout obrázek
Vladislav Žitňák was born on 22 July 1932 in the village of Vnorovy in South Moravia. He spent his childhood and youth in Blatnice, where his father owned a small guesthouse with a wine bar. His mother was a housewife and after the nationalisation of the family property she worked in a dairy. During the war, his father joined the resistance and participated in the work of the illegal Carbon group directed from London, founded by the paratrooper František Bogataj. At the end of the war, therefore, a large number of weapons were dropped near Blatnice, some of which ended up with the local population. After finishing municipal school, Vladislav Žitňák began to study at the Business Academy in Uherské Hradiště. He graduated in 1952 under dramatic conditions, because his class, consisting of 41 students, rebelled in the form of a petition against the school management‘s intention to exclude some of their classmates from taking their final exams due to their alleged kulak and bourgeois origins. The event was also investigated by State Security, but eventually the school management relented and all students successfully graduated. Vladislav Žitňák then applied to the University of Economics in Bratislava, where he was not admitted because of the cadre assessment. His father was then imprisoned in the Jáchymov region because after February 1948 he resumed the activities of his illegal war group, this time directed against communism. In 1949, his father attempted to cross the state border and emigrate. Vladislav Žitňák enlisted in the army and after two years of military service began working in Brno, where he also studied at a language school. He became a member of the PEN club and gained several foreign addresses for correspondence. He corresponded with people from the Federal Republic of Germany, England and France. From 1957 onwards, his correspondence was controlled by State Security. They believed that he was working for his father‘s group and communicating with the West in this way in code. State Security also suspected the group of possessing weapons dropped at Blatnice during the war. On 8 January 1959, Vladislav Žitňák was arrested in Brno. As he later learned, his parents were also arrested on the same day in Blatnice. He was interrogated in the prison in Uherské Hradiště for seven months, most of the time he spent in solitary confinement. The public trial took place in Uherské Hradiště on 12 August 1959. Since the prosecutors failed to prove his activities for his father‘s group, Vladislav was sentenced „only“ to three years in prison for „supporting and promoting fascism.“ Indeed, in his letters to Ursula Spilker from Federal Germany, he criticized the Communist regime and praised the West German democratic system. The appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court in Prague in September 1959. Žitňák spent his sentence in the Bytíz camp mainly doing surface digging work. He was released in May 1960 on the basis of a presidential amnesty. He was unable to find work for a long time, and was only employed by the District Construction Company in Brno as a warehouseman. Over time, he worked his way up through accountancy job to head of the information system. State Security once offered him cooperation, which he refused. In October 1991, the Regional Court in Brno overturned the verdict of the court in Uherské Hradiště and fully rehabilitated Vladislav Žitňák.
