„Freedom does not come without sacrifices. No one can give you the guarantee that some dumb head would not come and brain wash the people. That you would not have to go through all that which we had had to suffer.“
Tomáš Sedláček was born on January 8th in 1918 in Vienna, he spent his childhood in Spa Toušeň. Studied Military Academy in Hranice in Moravia. Already in 1938 he served as a lieutenant in the Liberec garrison. In 1940 he escaped through the so called „Balkan" road to France, later he was evacuated to England where he had gone through paratrooper training. In 1944, on the order of the Czech Ministry of National Defense, he was transferred to the eastern front - to Dukla and afterwards to the rear of the enemy to assist on the side of the Slovakian national uprising. After the war he had been active as a Professor at the Military Academy in Prague. In 1951 the late Major Sedláček was detained on account of an alleged conspiracy. He was tortured in the ill-known Little House in the Kapucínská Street in Prague. For nine days and nights Tomáš Sedláček was kept from sleeping, he was forced to walk all that time in the solitary cell. He was convicted to life imprisonment; he had been jailed in the prisons of Valdice, Mírov, Leopoldov, and Bytíz. After the amnesty of 1960 he worked as a mason, later as an assisstant draftsman. Tomáš Sedláček currently holds the degree of lieutenant-general in retirement.
