The whole square was clad in red
The nineteen-year-old Karel Vavřínek was arrested in May, 1949. He was charged with the publishing and distributing of anti-communist leaflets called “Voices of the Silenced”. His arrest was precipitated by his correspondence with a friend in Slovakia. “The Voices of the Silenced were published in Slovakia as well. Basically they would reprint our issues. The Slovak group was arrested at some point and then they clamped down on us, too.” The investigation of the group that counted over forty members took place in the Slovak town of Ružomberk and was supposed to be concluded by a trumped-up trial. After his arrest in Plzeň, Karel was escorted to Ružomberok. “A police officer escorted me on a train to Ružomberk. I remember that we had to change trains in Prague – we walked from one train station to another. He escorted me in handcuffs, my arms were chained and we walked across the Wenceslas Square. It was all clad in red, a communist rally was just taking place there. It was a weird ending.”
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Karel Vavřínek
Ing. Karel Vavřínek was born on August 20, 1929, in Plzeň, the eldest of three sons in a wealthy family. His father was an entrepreneur active in a number of areas. He owned several shops and real estate in Plzeň. Karel’s mother took care of the family. Since his youth, Karel was actively involved in scouting and in 1948, he completed his studies at a business academy in Plzeň. Disgusted by the events following the February 1948 Communist coup, he began to publish anti-communist leaflets entitled “Voices of the Silenced” with a few of his friends. In May 1949, he was arrested together with another member of their group. He was subsequently interrogated and sentenced to death in a trial that was held in Bratislava. The sentenced was later mitigated to 3.5 years in prison. He served his term in the Leopold prison and later in the labor camps of the Jáchymov mines, where he worked in Bratrství mine until his release in 1952. Thereafter, he kept working in Jáchymov for another year as a geodesist. Based on false conviction, both of his parents were imprisoned and subsequently deprived of their property. Karel graduated from the Czech Technical University and worked in the chemical industry. In 1970, he was rehabilitated. He currently lives in Prague and is involved in the publishing of the Almanac of Bohemian aristocratic families.
