Two stories of the struggle against totalitarianism
František Suchý Sr. * 21 June 1899 † 23 January 1982
From 1932 he was director of the Strašnický Crematorium. When the victims of political murders from Pankrác and Kobylis began to be burned in the crematorium during the Protectorate, František Suchý, together with his son, wrote down the names of the victims and kept their ashes. In this way, they saved the remains of 2,200 victims of Nazism who would otherwise have ended up in the compost heap. For this courage, he received the TGM Order in 2011.
František Suchý the Younger * 17 April 1927 † 7 June 2018
František was only 16 years old when he helped his father write down the names of people who had been executed by the Nazis a few hours earlier. When after the war the bodies of those executed began to be brought back, he decided to join the resistance. His father was again hiding the ashes of victims of a totalitarian regime, this time a communist one. Relatives were informed of the cremation, but were not allowed to see the body or be present at the ceremony. Young František was also holding the urn of Milada Horáková.
Mr and Mrs Suchý were briefly arrested in 1949 for helping another family flee across the border, and in 1952 František Suchý Jr. was also arrested. The parents were sentenced to 4 and 4.5 years and the son František was sentenced to 25 years in Mírov. He was released in the autumn of 1964 after serving half of his sentence. In 2017 he received Memory of the Nation Award.
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