Jan Janků

Jan Janků was born in 1921, in Hanušovice, located in the district of Šumperk. Around 1936, he joined the Scout movement, of which he still is an active member. After the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany in 1939, the family was forcibly moved to Vrbatky, nearby Přerov. There Jan Janků graduated from a business academy and later got a job in a candy factory. In early 1941, he was assigned to forced labor in Wroclaw and, in 1943, he fled back to the Protectorate. In 1944, he went to France, where he worked as a driver of the UNRRA. After returning to Czechoslovakia, he became actively involved in the Scout movement and became a scout leader. In May 1949, he was arrested in connection to the activities of the resistance group Světlana. He spent over a year in pre-trial detention in Uherské Hradište, where he was brutally interrogated by Alois Grebeníček, among others. In the trumped-up process, he was originally sentenced to life imprisonment but afterwards his sentence was changed to 20 years, most of which he served in the prison of Mírov where he after some time became a pharmacist. Mr. Janek has always been a deeply religious man and even during his term in the Mírov prison he participated in the spiritual life of the prisoners. In 1958, he was released and thereafter he worked as a railway man. Since 1989, he’s been actively engaged in the commemoration of the fate of the political prisoners of the 1950s. He’s been participating in lectures and discussions and he owns an extensive archive.

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