Vladislav Bobák

Vladislav Bobák (born February 4, 1912 in Horní Lhota u Luhačovic ; † July 12, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a Czechoslovak pilot and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

The trained waiter Vladislav Bobák was a sports pilot in his spare time.

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

After the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, he went to Poland and, as a result of the Second World War that broke out in September of the same year, finally to the Soviet Union , where he was trained as a parachutist . Together with the pilots Radoslav Selucký, Jan Vycpálek, Jaroslav Lonek and Miloslav Hůla, Bobák was deposed as an agent behind the enemy lines. The aim was to attract employees among the population and thus, among other things, to spy out German troop movements and armament projects in the area of ​​the Protectorate. Under the leadership and funding of the Soviet secret service, they succeeded in creating a network of scouts covering almost the entire area of ​​the Protectorate. Their information was transmitted, among other things, by means of encrypted messages, for which Selucký and Hůla were specially trained as radio operators who both mastered Morse code and were able to build appropriate radio equipment. Material samples, drawings, documents and the like were carried out of the country via the network. Vladislav Bobák operated under the code name Bredov .

Due to the expanding network, more transmitters were necessary and Vladislav Bobák was sent to Brno . Here he recruited other employees, among them the radio amateur Gustav Košulič , who served the group as a radio operator. Always under the risk of being targeted and discovered by the Germans, Košulič constantly changed the location of his radio station after a brief instruction in the system.

At the beginning of 1941, betrayed by Jaroslav Bednář, who worked for the Gestapo , and discovered by the Germans, Bobák, like many others in the network, was arrested and finally sentenced to death in November 1942. On July 12, 1943, Vladislav Bobák, like Košulič and other of his informants and employees, was executed in the Central Execution Site in Berlin-Plötzensee .

His name is now on the monument to the victims of the Second World War in the Moravian city ​​of Zlín .

literature

Execution site Berlin-Plötzensee

In 1979, the GDR military publishing house published the paperback book The Command of the Brave by František Kavan, which tells of the struggle and work of the scout network. In the original language it was published under the title Komando statečnych . According to this book, about two hundred people were arrested, of which one hundred and thirty-five were convicted. Fifty people were sentenced to death and executed, the rest of which were given long prison terms. Some of these had to be served in concentration camps, which, according to Kavan, cost another twenty-two lives. Bobák himself was sentenced on November 12, 1942, along with thirty-two of his co-workers.

And also the Czech non-fiction author , radio presenter and radio amateur Dr. Josef Daneš († 1999) reported in his 1985 book Za tajemstvím éteru on the work of the network with the participation of Vladislav Bobák and its later dismantling by the Gestapo.

Individual evidence

• Entry on Vladislav Bobák in the online encyclopedia Brno

1. ↑ František Kavan: The command of the brave . Military publishing house of the GDR, 1979 (Czech: Komando statečnych . Prague. Translated by Ruth Kassube).
2. ^ Josef Daneš: Za tajemstvím éteru. (Nakladatelství dopravy a spojů - Praha, 1985) pp. 146–157 ( Memento of the original of June 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Dr. Josef Danes dies - Radio Prag in Funkamateur , 1/00, p. 32