František Štverák, rector of Chvaly - opponent and prisoner of nazism and communism

The aim of my final bachelor thesis is to portray the life of František Štverák (1909-1956), a Czech catholic priest, who actively participated in the resistance against Nazi occupant regime. In spring 1940 he was arrested and interrogated by the gestapo. He experienced various concentration camps (Dachau, Sachsenhausen) surviving numerous life threatening situations under severe conditions. In April 1945 he lived to see the liberation of Dachau by the US army. In autumn that year he witnessed the trial of Nazi criminal from Dachau. After the communist revolution in February 1948 he stood up against the restraint of rights of the catholic Church in Czechoslovakia and its gradual liquidation. As a close collaborator of archbishop Josef Beran he was arrested in June 1949. During the period of custody he went through several communist prisons (Praha-Pankrác, Valdice-Kartouzy, Praha-Ruzyně). In January 1951 František Štverák was sentenced to twenty months in one of the many staged trial of catholic clerks and seculars. After having served his punishment he was held in internment (monasteries Želiv a Hájek) in the years 1951-1954. He was released in 1954 and two years later he died as a result of his long-term imprisonment