You must prove by your diligence that you belong in our ranks
Jaroslav Teichman was born on 27 August 1935 in Olomouc as the younger of two children to his parents Božena and Jaroslav. The family owned a gunsmith´s shop in Olomouc. During World War II, his father supported a partisan group in Bystřice pod Hostýnem by repairing and supplying weapons. After the communist regime took over, the gunsmith´s shop was nationalized in 1950 and two years later the family was evicted from Olomouc to Šternberk. In December 1953, the father was arrested and subsequently sentenced in a staged trial called „Brňovják and associates“ for treason and espionage to seventeen years in prison and confiscation of all property. He then went through the prisons in Mírov and Valdice. In May 1960 he was released from prison during an extensive amnesty. Other members of the family were also persecuted. Witness´s mother had to leave her job and Jaroslav was expelled from his studies at the forestry school in Vimperk and later from the evening studies at the grammar school in Šternberk. Eventually, however, he managed to graduate from the Forestry Master School in Strážnice and from 1964 to 1969 he studied at the Secondary Forestry School in Hranice. All his life he worked in various positions in the forest. He worked his career up from a worker to a forest district manager. Both his parents lived to see the fall of communism. His father was rehabilitated and in restitution there was also a compensation for the confiscated equipment of the family business. At the time of the filming in 2022, Jaroslav Teichman was living with his second wife Bohumila in Černá Voda near Jeseník