Bohumil Müller

His father, Tomáš Müller, was a leading member of the Unity of Brethren church, but the family converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931.

Young Bohumil became very active in his faith and shortly after conversion he started working in the main office of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Prague.

He later wrote: “My conscience, however, told me that God does not want his servants to ‘learn war’ (Isaiah 2: 4).” Consequently he refused to serve and was arrested, becoming the first person imprisoned in Czechoslovakia for his Christian beliefs as a conscientious objector.

After describing various unspeakable tortures he underwent in the course of his four years in Mauthausen, he said: “Towards the end of 1944 Himmler’s special deputy, SS-Hauptsturmbannfüher Kramer, came from Berlin to try and persuade us to sign, with various promises and smooth talk.

However, in July 1949 the State Court stopped the criminal proceedings on account of lack of evidence, and released the prisoners.

But as they were leaving the court they were arrested again and informed of a decision by the Communist Political Commission that they were to be sent to a labour camp for two years.

Under a dateline, Prague, 29 March (CTK), it said: “On trial were the leading members of a religious sect whose adherents call themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses.

This organisation, directed in Brooklyn, USA, and which has been banned in our country since 1949 for its destructive tendencies, has smuggled into Czechoslovakia cosmopolitan ideologies which, under the veil of pure Christianity, are designed to undermine the morale of our working masses.” Müller was sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment; others were given lesser sentences.