God, if you do exist...

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At the age of eighteen, Stanislav Lekavý was sentenced to two years in prison by the Communist regime. In the year 1949 he was put into correction in the Bory prison in Pilsen. He recollects that he had spent three weeks there, filled with unbearable beating, suffering and fear. “During those few weeks I turned grey and my hair started to fall out as well. Since then I have a speech disorder. At the time the disorder was so serious that I had to think hard about every word I wanted to say.” Stanislav Lekavý had to wear tight handcuffs throughout the entire time he had spent there; the handcuffs were causing him deep wounds on his hands. Because of these untreated wounds he suffered from blood poisoning which caused him great pain. His request to see a doctor was abruptly rejected. “I was close to death, because I had no chance of surviving. I had blood poisoning, with no doctor around, only great pain. The pain was so great that I fainted several times. For brief moments I didn’t feel any pain at all.” Suddenly he remembered his mother who believed in God strongly. “So in my mind I called out: ‘God, if you do exist..., then save my life.’ After that, from a feeling of utter despair, I bit and sucked my wound clean and then I lost consciousness. In the morning, I was woken by a kick from a warden and my hand was already better. I had survived and I see it – as my rebirth.” This event represented a turning point in the life of Stanislav Lekavý. From that moment on he started to consider a future Christian life.

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Stanislav Lekavý

Father Stanislav Lekavý was born in 1930 in Josefov (Hodonín district). As a youth he went through the harsh experience of a two-year internment in communist prisons. In 1948 he completed a two-year trade academy in Hodonín. Before their studies were over, his classmate brought some pamphlets condemning the putsch of February 1948 to the classroom. Having read them, Stanislav Lekavý was arrested for this on September 26, 1948 and then sentenced by the Regional Court in Uherské Hradiště to two years of imprisonment. He was held in Cejl in Brno, in Uherské Hradiště, Pilsen-Bory, Dolní Jiřetín and in the Jáchymov region. While in a correction cell in Bory, he contracted blood poisoning and almost died. He was released on September 25, 1950 and then briefly worked in a brickworks near Josefov. In November 1950 he was called to the PTP (Auxiliary Technical Battalions) where he served for three years. After his release he was working in Kyjov, where he was also attending evening classes of a secondary school. Then he applied for the school of theology in Litoměřice, but he was not admitted. In 1959 he was repeatedly blackmailed and urged to collaborate with the StB, but he always refused. In order to evade this pressure, he married and moved to Ostrava. In 1968 he began a distance study with the Faculty of Theology of the Palacký University in Olomouc. However, the faculty was closed down during the normalization era, and he had to finish his studies secretly. In 1978 his wife divorced him which was very difficult for him to bear. His life took a turn for the better when he was offered to be secretly ordained a priest. On July 20 he was secretly ordained by bishop Siard Klement in Brno. Throughout the normalization he was under surveillance by the State Secret Police. In 1990 he appealed to the ecclesiastical court for a revision of his marriage. After eight long years, the marriage was declared null and on September 25, 1998 he was officially ordained. From that time on he has been serving in the pilgrimage church of Virgin Mary the Helpful in Zlaté Hory.

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Plzeň, Bory

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The Bory prison is located on the southern outskirts of the city of Pilsen, near the Litice dam. The prison complex in Plzeň-Bory consists of a central building with radially protruding single wings. The resulting shape of the building is that of a regular octagon. In the 1950s, the Bory prison was renowned as one of the harshest prisons with primitive sanitation and living conditions. Up to five prisoners would be routinely placed in solitary confinement. A number of outstanding personalities were imprisoned here, such as Army General Heliodor Píka, who was executed in Bory on June 21, 1949. The so-called "Bory uprising", in which the former member of the Royal Air Force Josef Bryks participated, took place here. The participation in the uprising added an extra 20 years to his 10 years term that he had gotten in a trumped-up process in 1949. The rebellion was probably artificially staged. In later years, former Czech President Václav Havel was imprisoned here. The prison serves its purpose until today.