Believe me, dear ones, it is neither fear of what may come, nor weakness and weariness of what I have already gone through and what is behind me; it is only the human, perhaps understandable, realization that my life in freedom was too short to be enough to repay everyone – or at least those closest to me – for all their love, dedication, generosity and all their gifts, both temporal and spiritual, in a somewhat adequate, if not equal, way. I will say frankly and calmly that I am counting on death, and I ask you to count on this possibility as well. I am neither sad nor despairing, and I am calmly waiting for my Friday, when I shall probably have my last work, as we always used to have on Fridays. Dear father and dear mother, the time is fulfilled, and I, though reluctantly and with a heavy heart – though still trusting in God – must thank you gratefully and from the bottom of my heart for everything. I thank you in this way for loving my Eva so much and for helping her in every way to carry her cross. If I do not come back, please let your love and the love of my siblings make up for at least a little of what I have deprived her of.
These words full of humility and reconciliation were written by doc. JUDr. Vladimír Hora from a German prison, in a completely hopeless situation.
Dr. Hora was born on January 20, 1907 in Arnultovice.
In the early 1930s he worked as a judge at the court in Česká Lípa, where he joined in 1931. After two years he moved to Prague and worked as a secretary at the Supreme Administrative Court until 1939.
During the Nazi occupation, he was one of the most important figures of the resistance – he was secretary of the ÚVOD (“Central Committee of the Home Resistance”) with the code names “Kopeček”, “Berger” and “Křišťan”. He was arrested in February 1941. Many of his collaborators and fellow resistance fighters were sentenced to death and executed. JUDr. Hora was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. At the age of thirty-seven, he died in very poor conditions in the concentration camp at Briegen, near present-day Wroclaw, Poland, after his sentence in Berlin in Plőtzensee.
His father, JUDr. Václav Hora, served as a judge at the District Court in Nový Bor in 1901-1907 and subsequently became a professor at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague and its rector. In addition, he was the Worshipful Master of the Národ Lodge and the Grand Master of the Order, i.e. the Most Worshipful Grand Master of the National Grand Lodge of Czechoslovakia. Two descendants of these lawyers also worked in our Lodge, namely, JUDr. Jaroslav Oehm, and his son, JUDr. Petr Oehm. Thus, the Masonic legacy of JUDr. Hora and his moving fate endure.
David Ř.
