Svoboda, Pavel

The Road to Resistance

On November 17, 1939, during the closure of Czech universities, he was taken from Kounic's dormitories in Brno to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, from where he was released on December 22, 1939.


On 1 January 1940, he left for the foreign resistance via Slovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Pavel Svoboda travelled via Zagreb and was in the care of Czech compatriots (Czechoslovak Union in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). He was accommodated in the Czech National House, Šubičova 20. He was given an identity document for the journey from Zagreb to Belgrade, a ticket was bought for him and he was provided with food. He left Zagreb on 14.01.1940 in a group of 15 people for Belgrade, where they arrived on 16.01.1940.

In France

In Marseille from 28.01.1940, conscripted into the Czechoslovak Foreign Army on 06.03.1940. Assigned to the artillery regiment 1st Czechoslovak Division.
He applied for the air force (before the war he was already included in the action "1000 new pilots"). In April 1940 air group in Agde, evacuated from Port Vendres via Gibraltar to England in June 1940.

In the Royal Air Force

In the RAF from 25.07.1940. Trained as an air gunner, transferred to 311 Squadron in November 1940. Completed further training, from 27.05.1941 started operational activity in the crew of Alois Šiška on Wellington B Mk.IC KX-B. On 28.08.1941 while returning from a raid on Genoa he made an emergency landing.


In December 1941 he got married. But already on 28.12.1941, returning from a raid on Wilhelmshaven, the crew had to make an emergency landing at sea. One member was killed in the landing, the other five members spent a week in a rubber dinghy at sea, two of them died. The remaining, Pavel Svoboda, Alois Šiška and Josef Ščerba, were captured on the Dutch coast. Svoboda was imprisoned in the prison camp Stalag Luft VIII-B Lambsdorf.

From prisoner to partisan

His first attempt to escape on 12.09.1942 failed, his next attempt, when he was in a work crew at the sawmill in Glucholaze, on 01.05.1944 also ended unsuccessfully. When he got to work together with the Canadian aviator Vernon James Bastable at the quarry in Maly Heřmánky, they attempted a new escape with the help of Czech workers on 12.10.1944. They were caught again, imprisoned for 3 days in Krnov.


On 22.10.1944 another escape attempt, this time successful. They got to the Protectorate, first they went to Bukovany to Pavel Svoboda's uncle (27.10.1944), finally to his mother in Bohuslavice, where they arrived on 10.11.1944. Here they made contact with František Bogatay from the group CARBON and participated in a number of actions.


In April 1945, during a meeting in a hut at Kameňák, they were ambushed by the Gestapo. Pavel Svoboda was handed over as an escaped prisoner to the Kounic dormitory in Brno.


On 20.04.1945 he managed to escape with the help of the landowner Hašek from Okarce, he became involved in partisan activities in the vicinity of the Nine Crosses near Velké Bíteš.

After the war

On 11.05.1945 he joined a group of American airmen shot down near Tišnov in Brno, with them he left via Prague to Pilsen, on 19 May by air to Brussels and from there to Great Britain.


There he was reunited with his wife and three-year-old son. He returned with his family to Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1945, serving in the air force with the rank of captain. After February 1948, he went with his family to Great Britain again, where he worked in the civilian profession.

encyklopedie.brna.cz