Oldřich Stránský

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Oldřich Stránský (born June 2, 1921 in Most ; † July 18, 2014 in Prague ) was a Czech survivor of the Holocaust . As chairman of the Association of Liberated Political Prisoners and Their Survivors and of the Czech Council for National Socialist Victims, he took part in the international negotiations on compensation for former Nazi forced laborers in 1999 as a delegate for the Czech Republic .

Life

Until 1945

Stránský attended a Czech primary school, but his mother tongue was German. The family moved to Český Brod in the mid-1920s , where the father took over the family business, a grain trade. Stránský first attended grammar school and later the high school for industry and mechanical engineering in Prague- Smíchov , but after the establishment of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, he could no longer take the Matura due to German anti-Jewish legislation. Excluded from attending school, he became a laborer and worked for a horticultural company, among other things.

In June 1941, Stránský went to the "Linden Retraining Camp" in Lípa near Havlíčkův Brod to do agricultural work on the instructions of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague . Most of his family members were meanwhile deported via the Theresienstadt ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp and Majdanek concentration camp and murdered. On September 19, 1943, Stránský was also brought to the Theresienstadt ghetto and deported from there to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in mid-December 1943 , where he was placed in the so-called “ family camp ” and used as a corpse bearer. He survived a selection by Josef Mengele and left Auschwitz on June 30, 1944 on a transport. In July he was sent to the Schwarzheide concentration camp , a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he did forced labor . On April 22, 1945 he was liberated by the Red Army in Sachsenhausen .

After 1945

In January 1946, resigned his Stránský at the Higher School of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering in Prague Smichow High School from. He was involved in the Czechoslovak Social Democracy and refused to join the Communist Party after the February coup. From 1948 until his retirement he worked as an engineer and designer and became a senior technician at the military project institute. After 1989 , he joined the Czech Association of Freedom Fighters ( Český svaz bojovníků za svobodu ), which was founded in 1990 and whose predecessor organization he had already belonged to, and was involved in the association of liberated political prisoners and their survivors , which he chaired in 1998 took over. Stránský campaigned for compensation for the victims of the Nazi regime. He was a member of a discussion forum set up by the German-Czech Future Fund and participated as a delegate of Czech victims' associations in the negotiations on the compensation of concentration camp victims and slave laborers. In 2001 he and four other former forced laborers sued IBM in the USA for compensation.

Stránský attended many German-Czech meetings and rallies against anti-Semitism and made himself available as a contemporary witness for discussions in schools.

In addition, Stránský repeatedly took part in discussions on the subject of “Reconciliation between Czechs and Sudeten Germans ”, which were initiated by the Sudeten German office in Prague, among others. In 2004 he was therefore deposed as chairman of the Association of Liberated Political Prisoners , but took legal action against it successfully. In 2005 he was excluded from the Czech Association of Freedom Fighters because of “too friendly contacts” with the post-war displaced persons.

In 2009 he was awarded the First Class Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his commitment to German-Czech understanding .

Publications

  • Oldřich Stránský: There is no justice on earth. Memories of a Czech Auschwitz survivor. Translated by Anna Knechtel, Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78430-2 (original title: Není spravedlnosti na zemi ).

literature

  • Martin Doerry , Volker Hage, Johannes Erasmus, Lutz Diedrichs, Monika Zucht (photos): “Nowhere and everywhere at home”. Conversations with survivors of the Holocaust . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-421-04207-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Habbe u. Andreas Mink: the backbone of the Nazi structure . In: Der Spiegel , February 12, 2001.
  2. ↑ Martina Schneibergova: irreconcilable "freedom fighters": The Stránský case. In: haGalil.com, June 22, 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Stránský, Oldřich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech Holocaust survivor and representative of Nazi victims
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Must
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 2014
Place of death Prague