His first-born daughter was four when he could first see her in a prison visiting room
Stáhnout obrázek
Alois Rozehnal was born on 8 January 1922 in Prostějov as the only child of his parents Alois and Josefa. In 1941 he graduated from the grammar school in Prostějov and then worked at the Rolný company. He also had to work briefly in the coal mines in the Ostrava region as a part of forced labour in 1943. After his post-war studies at the Faculty of Law of Charles University, he started to work at the Archdiocese of Prague as a lawyer in charge of financial and property affairs. On 18 July 1949, he was arrested by State Security and on 19 and 20 January 1951, in the show trial of Josef Moštěk and associates, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for high treason. He then went through correctional labour camps at the uranium mines in the Jáchymov and Příbram regions, as well as the infamous prison in Leopoldov. His first-born daughter Michaela was already four years old when he first saw her while his family were visiting him in the prison. After being freed on conditional release in June 1956, he had labourer jobs. He was only allowed to practise law again during the politically liberal atmosphere at the end of the 1960s, when he was also rehabilitated. At the beginning of normalization period he had to become manual worker again. However, he later returned to his profession and worked as a lawyer in a cooperative farm and a housing association. He never gave up his convictions and kept on meeting Catholic dissidents and attended home seminars even during normalization. During the Velvet Revolution he gave several speeches at gatherings in Šumperk.
