Oleg Svátek

Oleg Svátek (born February 3, 1888 in Domoradice , † October 1, 1941 in Prague ) was a Czech soldier, legionnaire , general in Czechoslovakia and, as a leading member of the resistance group Obrana národa ("Defense of the Nation"), a personality of the 1939 resistance –1945 against National Socialism .

Life

After attending grammar school in Vysoké Mýto (1899–1903) Svátek was trained in a cadet school in Vienna and in 1907 was assigned to a regiment in Rzeszów with the rank of lieutenant ; After the outbreak of war in 1914, he came with this regiment to the Russian front, where he was injured on September 2, 1914 and taken to a military camp in Siberia. In August 1915 he joined the Czechoslovak Legions , where he completed various training courses and held positions. In 1920 he returned to Czechoslovakia as a lieutenant colonel.

In Czechoslovakia, Svátek was supervised as an officer with many tasks, including as a trainer, he also studied at the military academy himself. He served as regimental and brigade commander, in June 1929 he was appointed general. From October 1935 he served as commander of the 12th division in Uzhhorod in Carpathian Russia , which at that time belonged to Czechoslovakia. After the proclamation of the Slovak state and the start of the Hungarian invasion of Carpathian Russia in March 1939, he led the defense and evacuation of Czechoslovak citizens from the area.

In Prague Svátek was entrusted with tasks in the so-called liquidation department of the Ministry of Defense, which was supposed to organize the dissolution of the army and the transfer of soldiers and officers to civilian life. In doing so, he made contact with the emerging resistance movement of the Obrana národa. At the end of the year he created the district command office in Prague-Southwest of Obrana národa, which survived the first arrests by the Gestapo with relatively little loss. It was only in September 1941 that he was arrested and tortured (with others) without giving the Gestapo any insight into the structure of the organization. On October 1, 1941, he was executed in the Prague- Ruzyně prison .

In October 1946, Oleg Svátek was posthumously raised to the rank of division general .

Awards

• Order of the Falcons , 1919
• Czechoslovak Revolution Medal , 1920
• Czechoslovak War Cross 1914–1918 , 1920
• Legion of Honor (Ordre national de la Légion d'Honneur), 1928
• Czechoslovak War Cross 1939 , 1945

swell

• Keyword Svátek , biography in the online encyclopedia CoJeCo, online at: cojeco.cz / ...
• Přehled popravených, umučených a padlých československých generálů , keyword brigádní generál Oleg SVÁTEK , biography, online at: codyprint.cz / ...
• Svátek, Oleg - divisní generál in memoriam / Division General in Memoriam , Forum valka.cz, online at: forum.valka.cz / ...