“We could not watch, how the regime destroyed the most conscientious people.”
Ján Bajtoš was born on June 24, 1937, he comes from the village Spišský Štvrtok. He is the eldest of three brothers. Father Ján Bajtoš together with mother Alžbeta Bajtošová, as single girl Zummerová, they earned living by working on the family farm. After the communist coup in 1948, the family was hit so hardly by measures in the area of violent collectivization and contingents. The father was in custody for three days, because of the late delivery of the harvest, like a warning. Ján Bajtoš Jr. as a smart student after graduating from folk and burgher school, he continued his studies at the Levoča grammar school. As a sign of disagreement with the regime, he and other friends wrote protest anti-communist inscriptions in the village. In April 1954, he was detained by the State Security and underwent pre-trial custody in Levoča, later in Košice. In August 1954, as a juvenile, he was sentenced by the Regional Court in Košice to one and half years in prison. After his appeal to the Supreme Court in Prague, his sentence was increased to two years. He completed his detention at a juvenile correctional facility in the czech village Zámrsk. After the finish of his sentence, he was employed by the state enterprise Jáchymovské doly: he examined the presence of uranium ore within the allocated workplace in Novoveská Huta (today the town Spišská Nová Ves). After extensive ups and downs, he managed to complete his studies at the grammar school in Levoča, later he completed a two-year study at the Pedagogical Institute in Martin. In the following years he worked as a teacher in Staškov, later he was the deputy director. In 1961, he married Anna Malíková, who was also a teacher. Two sons and one daughter incurred from the marriage. In 1966, he returned to Spišský Štvrtok and later worked as the head of the family and child care department at the district national committee. After the fall of the communist regime, he was appointed secretary of the ONV. He was later removed from office after coming of Vladimír Mečiar to power. Ján Bajtoš has been retired in Spišská Nová Ves since 1996.
