Jan Bula

Jan Bula

Jan Bula with children.

Interrogation protocol from the district command of the Jihlava tax office with Jan Bula

Jan Bula (born June 24, 1920 in Lukov , † May 20, 1952 in Jihlava ) was a Czech priest. After he did not want to accept the restrictive requirements for exercising his priesthood in communist Czechoslovakia , he was stylized as one of the main accused in a show trial , sentenced to death and executed in 1952.

Life

Bula, who grew up in a family of railway workers, studied theology in an alumni in Brno from 1939 to 1945 . During the war he was assigned to the so-called full deployment , but he was able to stay in a factory in Znojmo in the Protectorate . He was ordained on July 29, 1945 and from August worked as a chaplain in Rokytnice nad Rokytnou in South Moravia; on July 22, 1949 he became administrator in the local parish.

The Babice case and trial

During 1949 the repressive course of the communist party against the church intensified and it was forbidden to distribute various documents of high church officials, including the pastoral letter of the disgraced Archbishop Josef Beran , who refused to submit to the party. Jan Bula disregarded this restriction. On June 19, 1949, he read out a manifesto of Catholic bishops dated June 15, 1949 at a mass and commented on it with a declaration in which he "tried to create the impression that the Catholic Church ... is being persecuted".

Bula was sentenced to a heavy fine, further prosecution for incitement ( Law 231/1948 for the Protection of the Republic, § 3) and dissemination of harmful information (ibid, § 32) was suspended due to an amnesty on probation. However, Bula had to restrict some activities, especially his work with young people, and remained the focus of government bodies.

In February 1951, Bula was contacted by a former classmate Ladislav Malý , who pretended to be an employee of the US intelligence service CIC , as such to organize the escape of Cardinal Beran abroad and to look for a person of trust on his behalf, who then Berans Could pass on instructions to the church. On the advice of his friends, Bula did not respond to this and finally turned the man down after a few meetings. However, on April 30, 1951, Bula was arrested and subjected to harsh interrogations, like some other people with whom Malý made contact.

A welcome handle against Bula and many others came two months later with the so-called Babice case . On July 2, 1951, Ladislav Malý, together with some companions, attacked a meeting of the local MNV National Committee, with three communist functionaries being shot. Bula, who did not report the establishment of contact by Malý in the spring of that year, was accused of alleged involvement in high treason and in a trial in Třebíč (November 13-15, 1951), which is one of the largest show trials in Czechoslovakia, as one of the Main suspect sentenced to death. An appeal on February 9, 1952 was refused and the request for amnesty was rejected. Jan Bula was executed in Jihlava on May 20, 1952 . After 1989, like all other convicts, he was rehabilitated.

Individual evidence

1. ^ From the opinion of the Ministry of Justice to the Presidential Office of February 16, 1952, cited above. according to Adolf Rázek, tax + justice, nástroje třídního boje v akci Babice [tax + justice, instruments of class struggle in Action Babice], publication of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes ÚSTR , Prague 2002, ISBN 80-86621-02-2 , online at: aplikace.mvcr.cz/archiv2008/policie/udv  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Page 211 (facsimile), accessed March 3, 2012  
2. ↑ Communication from the District Procuratorate in Třebíč of November 29, 1949, facsimile of the document online at www.ustrcr.cz/data , in Czech, accessed on December 5, 2011

swell

• Markéta Doležalová, Jan Bula, biography of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes ÚSTR , online at: www.ustrcr.cz/cs/ , Czech, accessed December 6, 2011
• Případ Babice (The Babice Case), website of the Babice Municipality, online at www.obecbabice.eu/pripad_babice.htm , in Czech, accessed on December 6, 2011
• Vražda Patera Jana Buly. Podle archivních dokumentů sestavil a redakčně upravil Milan Krejčiřík [The murder of Father Jan Bula. Based on archival documents compiled by Milan Krejčiřík], online at: milan.i-line.cz , Czech, accessed on March 2, 2012
• Luděk Navara, Miroslav Kasáček: And yet they stay close to us - the life and martyrdom of priests Jan Bula and Vaclav Drbola from Babice. Gerhard Hess Verlag, Bad Schussenried, 2019, 253 pages, ISBN 978-3-87336-637-4 (translation from Czech)

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about Jan Bula in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic