In memory of Jiří POTŮČEK - TOLARA part 1

He was born on 12 July 1919 in Bruneck (South Tyrol), graduated from a burgher school with a one-year apprenticeship and trained as a shoemaker. He found employment at the company "Fy. Bata in Zlín, where he became an instructor in a rubber factory. Because of his professional skills and knowledge of languages (he learned English and German), he was sent to Osijek in Yugoslavia at the end of August 1939 as head of the Bata branch. The following year he left for France via Istanbul and there joined the forming Czechoslovak foreign army. After the surrender of France, he sailed to England where he was selected for special courses (paracourse and radiotelegraph course). The staff of the intelligence department of the London MNO assigned him as a telegraphist of the paragroup SILVER A (commander Lieutenant Commander Alfréd Bartoš, deputy Staff Sergeant Josef Valčík).

The group was to establish and maintain radio contact with the Military Radio Headquarters in Britain, build up an intelligence network (to obtainto obtain economic and military news and to establish contacts with the leaders of domestic resistance organisations. SILVER A fulfilled its tasks without fail.

On 15 January 1942, after the first difficulties, Potůček managed to establish a two-way radio link with the British and then with the Czechoslovak radio headquarters. His radio station LIBUŠE was the only one in 1942 that was permanently in contact with the leadership of the foreign resistance. He maintained intensive radio traffic with greater or lesser difficulties until 26 June 1942. During this time it sent 578 dispatches, and received 516 dispatches. In total, this amounts to about 144 pages of standard typescript (30 lines per page, 60 characters per line). Such a volume of radio traffic forced Potůček to change transmission sites. He worked with the LIBUŠE station from Ležáky, Bohdanec, Pardubice and Mnětice. The last shelter in Bohdašín near Červený Kostelec was obtained through a Sokol organization led by Josef Schejbal, a teacher from Malé Svatoňovice.
The operation of Potůček's radio station was not without technical difficulties. Collaborators who were not only willing but above all able to help him were found in Pardubice and Červenokostelecko. They tried to build replacement transmitters for SILVER A in both places. Potůček made one unsuccessful test with the device built by the Sokol organization during his stay in Bohdašín.

Potůček moved to Bohdašín on 18 June 1942, his stay there was accompanied by difficulties, fears and nervousness of all insiders. This was certainly compounded by the news of the burning of Ležáky, published in the Protectorate press on Thursday 25 June 1942.

Ladislav Satran, the managing teacher of the Bohdašín school, tried to find a new location for Potůček and LIBUŠI. He asked for help from the Rtyň doctor Dvořáček, who, however, reported it to the Gestapo in Hradec Králové. Around noon on June 30, 1942, the Gestapo broke into the Bohdašín school, but they did not find the radio station or Potůček. In the meantime, he was transferred to the Burdychs' homestead in Končinách, from where he was to move to the former Sokol camp in Doubravice near Dvůr Králové n/Labem.

The Gestapo subjected Satran to harsh interrogation. They knew that the only way to Potůček was through him. They managed to break him and got a description of Potůček's hiding place in Končiny, where they immediately went. At Končiny, there was a shootout between Potůček and the Gestapo, and Potůček managed to escape (wearing only his shirt, trousers and bare feet) towards Zábrodí, where he asked a local teacher for his coat and shoes. The latter, however, turned him away and reported the presence of the unknown man and the direction of his movement towards Trubějov to the gendarmerie station in Červený Kostelec, which in turn reported him to the Gestapo.

In the early evening, Potůček turned up at the Stolín family in Řešetová Lhota, where he was given food, a coat and shown the way to the train station. However, Potůček headed for the forest at Skála and soon appeared in Studnice with Jaromír Falta. Here, too, he received help. But that is the end of his last verifiable trace in our region. According to Ludmila Stolínová's testimony, Potůček asked for directions to Pardubice, where he wanted to travel by train. He had several friends there, and probably knew the area better. We can only guess which way he chose to travel.

Morning 1. At 9 a.m. on July 1, the gendarmerie received instructions to search for an unknown man, a paratrooper, with a description of his clothes (he is barefoot, wearing a beige shirt and grey trousers, probably pumps).

On the evening of 1 July, at about seven o'clock, Blažená Šimková from Srch near Pardubice spoke to Potůček. On the morning of the second of July he appeared in Rosice nad Labem. However, the friend Nováček, whom he was looking for, had already been arrested, so he turned to his landlord Fitzbauer for help. The latter recognized in him the man who had been visiting Nováček, and he reported his presence to the gendarmerie station in Doubravice and described how he was dressed. A search was launched in the immediate vicinity. Around noon, a gendarme constable, Půlpán, found Potůček sleeping in an oak tree near Trnová and shot him. He would have been twenty-three years old in ten days.

By the hand of a Czech, the last surviving paratrooper of the SILVER A group died. On the same day, the Nazis executed 37 direct collaborators of the group from Pardubice at the Pardubice Castle, the fifthct of Potůček's associates from Bohdašín and Červenokostelecko were shot by the Germans at the same place on the evening of 9. July.
Jiří Potůček - Tolar was promoted in memoriam to the rank of lieutenant after the war.Infantry, was awarded the second Czechoslovak War Cross 1939 and the Czechoslovak Commemorative Medal.

(continued next week)

(the author of all the texts is Vít'a Hanák - the texts were given to Pepík Rudolf - guitar for finishing and publishing)

You can search for artefacts from World War II with our metal detectors.