František Boháč (1914–1951)
František Boháč was born into a shoemaker’s family in Lovran (formerly Austria-Hungary, later Italy, now Croatia), on October 2, 1914. His father was of Czech nationality and his mother came from the territory that later became Yugoslavia. He acquired elementary education first in the Serbian-Croatian language and later in Italian. His father left for Czechoslovakia in 1927 and the son followed him a year later, to learn the trade of a cook in the Plzeňský dvůr hotel in Brno at his father’s wish. Without finishing his training he went back to Italy in 1930 to make living as a fisher and later as a sailor. At that time he made a number of voyages to various ports in northern and eastern Africa (his ship was at anchor as far as Russian Odessa in 1934).
As a Czechoslovak citizen, he was called up by the Czechoslovak Consulate in 1935, and after returning to Czechoslovakia he commenced military service at the 40th Infantry Regiment in Valašské Meziříčí. In 1936 he was promoted to the rank of Private First Class. After finishing his compulsory military service in 1937, he stayed in the army and was posted to the 1st Mountain Regiment in Dolný Kubín). By the time of the September (1938) mobilization he reached the rank of Sergeant and was appointed commander of a telephone team.
When the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established in 1939, František Boháč joined the government forces and was posted to the 12th Battalion at Lipník nad Bečvou. His unit was allocated to the railway surveillance service in the section Přerov–Lipník–Hranice–Valašské Meziříčí–Vsetín. In May 1944 he left with his battalion to Italy, to be used as an interpreter at the Headquarters due to his good command of languages. During his service in Italy he established contacts with Italian partisans and Czechoslovak anti-fascist resistance movement and began to act as a messenger. On the order of Major Veselý, e.g., he undertook a successful expedition aimed to establish contacts with Yugoslav partisans.
When the war was over, František Boháč continued his army career to reach the rank of Second Lieutenant, but he was dismissed from the army in August 1949 (pensioned off as of September 1, 1949) and began to work as a blue-collar worker in the Elektrosvit factory warehouse. At the close of 1950, he and another two men, Jan Křižan and Vladimír Krejčiřík, tried to flee the country to Austria. He intended to go on to Yugoslavia to join his fiancée who he had not been allowed to visit after 1948. During their attempted escape in the night of January 1, 1950, their car was stopped by a two-member armed guard near Mikulov (southern Moravia). When the guard were escorting them back to Mikulov, Jan Křižan shot dead Chief Police Constable Václav Anšlág, while František Boháč, with Křižan’s assistance, seriously wounded Private Edmund Sziklai. Even though the three escapees eventually succeeded in crossing the state border to Austria, they were soon detained by Austrian police and extradited to the Soviet army which took them back to Czechoslovakia as early as January 4, 1950. On December 14, 1950, the State Court in Brno sentenced František Boháč to death on charges of high treason and incomplete murder. The death penalty was executed in Brno on June 14, 1951.