Vratislav Janda (1913–1949)
Vratislav Janda was born at Úžice (Mělník – formerly Kralupy nad Vltavou - District, Central Bohemian Region) on August 1, 1913, into a family of a sugar-mill worker and a housewife. After finishing elementary school he went to study secondary school and completed it with a GCE. In October 1936 he commenced compulsory military service at the 47th Infantry Regiment in Mladá Boleslav. He was promoted to the rank of Private First Class in March 1937 and became Aspirant Corporal in August 1937. In the autumn of 1937 he went to the Military Academy at Hranice na Moravě which he successfully finished with the rank of Infantry Lieutenant. He became a career soldier and held the post of a Squad Commander at the Border Guard Battalion in Děčín until the dissolution of the Czechoslovak Army in 1939.
After Czechoslovakia’s occupation by Nazis he began to work as an official at the Mnichovo Hradiště District Authority Office, and joined illegal activity as a member of resistance organization ÚVOD. He was arrested by Germans in 1942 and imprisoned first in Mladá Boleslav and later at Pankrác Prison in Prague. During his arrest he was repeatedly beaten and tortured by the Gestapo, and after one interrogation he was unconscious for three days. He stood trial at the Dresden Court where capital punishment was proposed for him, but it was eventually changed to “mere” ten years of penal servitude. During the following three distressful years, when he was used among other things in digging unexploded air bombs, he went through prisons in Chemnitz, Bamberg and Schweinfurt. In April 1945 he succeeded in escaping from the last mentioned jail and joined the advancing American Army. However, the hardship he had gone through left such traces on him – his weight was only 37kg – that he could return to Czechoslovakia only in August 1945, after he had recovered.
In appreciation of his activity in the course of the German occupation, Vratislav Janda received the Czechoslovak War Cross, the Czechoslovak Medal for Bravery before the Enemy, and the Czechoslovak Military Medal For Merits 2nd class. As a career soldier in the restored Czechoslovak People’s Army he was first posted to the 30th Infantry Regiment in Liberec, and in August 1945, as a fresh Staff Captain, to the 48th Infantry Regiment in Pelhřimov where he was appointed the 3rd Company Commander. During his service in Pelhřimov he was subordinated to Battalion Commander Major Květoslav Prokeš, who later fell victim to „Action Anton“ just like him. In September 1948, Vratislav Janda was appointed the 15th Company Commander in Benešov. His arrest came on May 16, 1949. He was accused of masterminding an armed putsch that was allegedly to break out in the night from May 16 to 17. The judgement stated that on the order of Květoslav Prokeš, Janda was to be in command of some 70 submachine gunners who were to ensure successful course of the coup.
According to communist investigators, it was a crafty and widely-branched conspiracy that was to break out any minute, and the number of arrests just like the harshness of sentences corresponded to this classification. Vratislav Janda was sentenced to death by the Mixed Bench of the Prague State Court (Chairman Lieutenant Colonel Jiří Štella, State Prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Vieska) on July 30, 1949, on charges of alleged high treason. The same sentence was given to Květoslav Prokeš and Jaroslav Borkovec. Emanuel Čančík, Josef Charvát and Vratislav Polesný received death penalty on the same charges (planning the so-called May Putsch) in a parallel trial held before the Civil Senate of the State Court. The lives of all these men ended at the Prague-Pankrac execution site on November 5, 1949.