In 1947, he received an order for the TGM monument from the "Celebration Committee for the Unveiling of the Monument to President Liberator Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in Jihlava". The executive director of the association was Vratislav Šedivý, the chairman was Ludvík Čutka. So the sculptor initially models two busts of TGM, and only in March 1948 (!) does the local national committee in Jihlava approve the location of the planned statue. Most likely, also due to the rapidly changing political situation, intensive correspondence is underway between the ceremonial committee and interested or necessary parties. Even in July, the Ceremonial Committee sends an invitation to the Presidency of the Government, written in a celebratory spirit towards TGM: "This monument is being built by the efforts of students from Jihlava national and secondary schools, who not only gave the impetus to this event, but also provided almost the entire cost with their own contribution (...) It will be a joyful confession of young Jihlava to progressive democratic and humanitarian ideals, which were the main meaning and content of T. G. Masaryk's teaching, educational, scientific and political activities, which had such a beneficial effect on the life of our nation..."
In the meantime, however, the chairmanship of the Local National Committee in Jihlava had changed, so in August the association's representatives sent letters to the Regional National Committee, in which they announced the unveiling of the monument and attached an invitation to the government and begged for intervention, further asking the Local National Committee and the party to "take over the monument for protection". After all vicissitudes and interventions, permission finally comes from the Local National Committee, while the agenda is entrusted to Ludvík Čutka as the chairman of the association and former chairman of the Local National Committee, a circular is sent to all members of the Local National Committee with an invitation, and a reply comes from the government that they have decided to send "Mr. Svitavský, chairman of the Regional National Committee in Brno..." to the unveiling of the monument. However, Svitavský apparently did not respond, so an official dated record is attached to the invitation that "upon a telephone inquiry, the office of Mr. chairman Svitavský informed that the chairman will not be able to attend and will be represented by board member Otakar Krupička.” The monument was finally, with all honors (and without the participation of the government or its representatives), unveiled on Sunday 12/09/1948 and “handed over to the Local National Committee depository”, given that the owner of the monument was not the city, but an association that provided money and initiated the unveiling.
Subsequently, the second event begins: the purchase of a plaster model for the Jihlava City Gallery "after payment for repair and patination" in the amount of CZK 3,500, when, on 12 October 1948, Jaroslav Šlezinger personally negotiated with the Cultural and Education Commission about the conditions and at the Local National Committee meeting on October 20, 1948, it was decided to purchase a model for the gallery, but where – due to historical inaccuracies and the absence of some documents from the gallery's early period – it is kept as "a gift from Marie Kovaříková" until this year. Only thanks to cooperation with Jihlava archive (from where the mentioned documents and quoted correspondence come from) and Marie Bohuňovská's book did we find out how the TGM model got into our collections.
Shortly after the unveiling of the statue and the purchase of the model, Jaroslav Šlezinger was indicted and convicted in the "Veselý, Tuček, Rod et al." trial in February 1950, and died in a prison hospital after internment in the Vykmanov II camp in 1955. He did not live to see the four-meter-high monument in front of the Jihlava gymnasium destroyed in 1961, he was fully rehabilitated in 1990.
Lucie Nováčková