Low quality yellowish paper, compressed typed text, red stamp stating the document was declassified at the end of the millennium. Interior Ministry inquiry protocol from the summer of 1965 in the case of Josef Starý, who was sent to prison for fourteen years by a Communist court in 1950. Crime of espionage. Due to alleged connection with Josef Results. The legendary king Šumava.

“Josefhasil was a member of the National Security Corps and most recently served in the border unit Josefův důl, Zvonková village, Český Krumlov district. After February 1948, he used his knowledge on national borders and transferred anti-state elements who fled abroad across the border,” he explained in the spirit of the documents of the socialist era.

“His activities were exposed, he was caught and sentenced. Nine years sentence. He escaped from prison. After moving abroad, he got CIC as an agent on duty in the territory of the Republic (CIC, US Intelligence Service, note ed.). Result and his friends were armed with machine guns. During a collision with a Border Guard patrol, both Border Guards were shot dead in an exchange of fire. The Result group became a terror on the borders, and it was not without reason that this act became the model for the novel by author Rudolf Kalčík The King of Šumava, because the Results were called by that name.”

Loud descriptions hide one of the most incredible stories that happened on the borders of the Czechoslovak state after the communist coup in February 1948.

Josefhasil was born on 8 February 1924 in Zábrdí u Prachatice in Pošumaví as the seventh of eight children. During World War II, he was fully deployed in Passau, Bavaria, escaped and joined the partisans. As soon as the fighting ended, he joined the police.

“He was of a strong character, quiet, kind, quick,” the commander summed up his character traits in his assessment. In January 1948, he was assigned to a frontier unit. In the immediate aftermath of the February coup, however, he exchanged the aid of border guards for people fleeing totalitarian Czechoslovakia for Bavaria. He became a so-called pedestrian agent, as traffickers were called in the terminology of the StB secret police at the time. He helped dozens of people to freedom. A legend was born.

“However, on October 20, 1948, while returning from Bavaria, a fight broke out near the border. Josef fled, but was immediately betrayed by a man whom he asked for water at the end of his strength. He was sentenced early February 1949,” explained the association Memory of the nation.

He did not stay behind bars for long. As the protocol cited above has shown, on 9 May 1949, at the labor camp in Dolní Jiřetín, while awaiting transportation after his release, he passed by armed guards and disappeared. He managed to migrate abroad to continue his activities with his brother Bohumil.

Together, they moved refugees, families with children, important politicians, in short, everyone who was persecuted by the new regime across the country’s borders. At the same time, they cooperated with the resistance, providing them with materials and building an extensive network of informants. Another brother, Julius, also participated in the activity.

They even exchanged fire several times. In one of them a young border guard was killed in 1949, and in one of them, on September 13, 1950, Bohumil’s brother was hit by nine projectiles in the meadow below the Žlebský vrch. He’s dead. Josef then manages to escape. However, his family did not escape the cruel persecution.

In 1953, the communist regime fortified the border with the West. And that was the end for the smugglers too. Josef Result went to the United States, married and worked as a draftsman at the General Motors car factory in Chicago until he retired. In 2001, President Václav Havel presented him with the Medal for Heroism. He died in the US on November 15, 2019, he was 95 years old.

Yield Life inspires filmmakers and writers. Already in the late 1950s, it was the model for the film King of the Šumava directed by Karel Kachyna. The ideologically colored film, however, heavily distorts events and combines the fate ofhasil with the life of the elusive Šumava smuggler, Kilián “Franz” Nowotný. The border guards nicknamed him King Šumava.

Video: Footage from the Král Šumava: Phantom of the Dark Region miniseries