11. 7. 2012 The sabre belonged to General Moravec

Nine years ago, Bohuslav Veselý found a suitcase in the garden of his house containing items belonging to General František Moravec. The suitcase with uniforms and a sabre was buried on the property by a friend of his family. The general fled from the Nazis to England.

A man found the suitcase buried in the garden of his house in Čáslav, Kutná Hora. Inside were uniforms and other items such as sabres. His lawyer Oldřich Skalák spoke for the finder, Bohuslav Veselý.

"My client found a sabre in the courtyard of his family villa near the square in Čáslav during excavation work.a bayonet, a bayonet from a French Lebel rifle and three daggers dating back to the First World War," the lawyer explained.

Moravec emigrated to England with his family in mid-March 1939. He was fleeing the Nazis, but he could not take "everything" with him. So a suitcase with uniforms and other personal belongings was buried in his garden by his girlfriend, the then twenty-nine-year-old Jana Minaříková. When he returned after the war, he obviously had other things to worry about from May 1945 to February 1948, and he did not need the uniforms or other hidden items.

During the war, however, such items needed to be hidden somewhere. "This was because people like Moravec and all those in his patriotic circle were wanted by the German authorities," explained publicist Jan Tetřev.

The most valuable object was the aforementioned Czechoslovak officer's sabre. Then there was a luxury lighter from the well-known Viennese company Richard Kohn. There were also stabbing weapons in the suitcase.

"They were heavily corroded, only the hilt guard of the sabre, made of white metal, was preserved, including the attached decorative gold tassel," Skalák noted.

There was also a corroded box in the trunk, which allegedly contained photographs and documents that were already heavily damaged by age and unidentifiable. Skalák handed them over to the director of the Čáslav museum, Sona Dedíková.

The explanation of how the suitcase ended up in Veselá's garden is quite simple. "Mr Veselý informed me during our meetings that among the acquaintances and friends of their family, or rather of their mother, who ...whose maiden name was Minaříková, was General František Moravec," said the lawyer.

Sources: www.denik.cz, www.idnes.cz