Oldřich Stránský

Source of the picture: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,451686,00.html

Source: http://www.pametnaroda.cz/witness/index/id/603/page/3?locale=en_GB

Mr. Oldřich Stránský was born in Most town in a multilingual Jewish family. During his childhood he spoke much better German, but his parents, who were influenced by their affection toward T. G. Masaryk and their own first Republic ideas decided to send him to Czech school. During the mid 20´s the Stránský family moved to Český Brod town, where his father took over the family business. Oldřich Stránský (and his brother) attended the Scout organization here and –according to his own words- it influenced his life essentially.

The Nazi occupation meant the same disaster to Stránský family as to the rest of the Jewish population. Their family business has been Aryanized and Oldřich Stránský was forced to leave the technical college when he was nineteen so he could start to work as a laborer. On June 22nd 1941 he was transported into the first Jewish concentration camp of the protectorate located in Lípa village by Havlíčkův Brod town. He never saw his parents and his brother anymore - they have been taken away to Terezín ghetto after the R. Heydrich assassination. Very soon after that they were transported further to the East and died later in Polish annihilation camp called Majdanek. Mr. Oldřich Stránský was also transported to Terezín in September of 1943 and in December of 1943 he was included into the Auschwitz transport train.

He was assigned to the so-called „family camp“ and he got the number 168830 tattooed on his forearm. After his arrival, his life has been saved by mere coincidences: he met a friend who told him all about the life in Auschwitz After some while he got favored job there among the Leichenkommando, which basically meant the dead body carrier. He also found one hundred and twenty dollars sewn into the coat he was given. Later he used this money to buy some food.

Mr. Oldřich Stránský managed to pass the selection supervised by Josef Mengele and on June 30th 1944 he left Auschwitz. Two weeks later he arrived to the forced labor camp in Schwerzheide in Saxony. Oldřich Stránský lived to see the liberation of Sachsenhausen camp on April 22nd 1945.

After the war Mr. Oldřich Stránský participated also in displacement of one of the German villages in 1946. Despite the fact, that during this operation no violation occurred, watching the people leaving their home left such a strong impact on him, that ´he couldn’t completely agree with the displacement´ anymore. After 1948 he worked as a constructor and designer and he never became a member of the KSČ (Communist party of Czechoslovakia - translator’s note). After the breakdown of the communist regime he was a member of the Czech Association of Freedom Fighters. He was a chairman of this association since 1998 and he helped to negotiate the compensation for victims of Nazism.

See also his book "Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit auf Erden Erinnerungen eines tschechischen" at https://books.google.com.br/books?id=iG-XNLMD58cC&dq=Stransky&hl=de...

at Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old%C5%99ich_Str%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD