Long way to the Bridge of Spies
Jaroslav Javorský was born on 31 May 1947 in Prague. He graduated from the grammar school and then completed a two-year follow-up study course at the secondary school of economics in Karlovy Vary, majoring in tourism economics (1967). During his basic compulsory military service he was captured by Soviet occupation soldiers in August 1968, but together with seven other men he managed to disarm the guards and escape. In 1969 he became an involuntary collaborator of the military counter-intelligence (VKR) as a result of blackmail. In 1977 he emigrated with his brother and parents to West Germany, where he, besides other things, earned a living as a tennis coach. In the same year, he tried to smuggle his then Czech girlfriend and her daughter to the West from Bulgaria, but was arrested, deported to Czechoslovakia and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment in 1978 in a mock trial for alleged espionage. He served most of his sentence in harsh conditions in Valdice Prison, where, among other things, he went on repeated hunger strikes. In 1986, he was included in the so-called Glienicke Bridge spy exchange between Berlin and Potsdam. He then lived in West Germany, where, among other things, he participated in the preparations for the establishment of an exile publishing house, which eventually - after the fall of communism - resulted in the support of the Libri prohibiti library of banned literature. In 1990 he founded the Bohemia Agency, which facilitated mutual trade after the opening of the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany. Even today (2023) he is a businessman and owner of the company Bohemia-Grafia, specialized in printing machines. In 2023 Jaroslav Javorský lived with his family near Prague, he had both Czech and German citizenship.