Oldřich Stránský

* 1921  †︎ 2014

  • "We were ´the typical Czech family´. My father has been raised with Czech and he passed Czech schools too. My mom grew up in a German speaking family and since there were no other schools in Most town, she also passed the German schools. At the same time we were Jews by the origin. Therefore we have fulfilled the three criteria of being Czech citizens, which were: Czechs, Germans and Jews. My father came from the Czech background and his life motto was, that I should chose my religion when I’ll get older and smarter, after I’ll be seventeen. After the WWI there used to be the religion diversion in general, so our father left the Jewish religion. But after we were born he enrolled us to Jewish religion again. So today, I’m still waiting for me to get smart so I could join some religion. I’m not sure whether I can do it though, since I’m already eighty five."

  • "The supply was quite good there. When the people arrived on the transport trains they usually had plenty of food for the journey to save them from starvation. And after they went to the gas chambers, all their belongings were left here. People who were separating the things couldn’t eat all of the food, so they would exchange it with other people, like for an example Franta was. He used to ride the local buggy, so he took the food and came back later with something else. It was a never ending business. And if someone knew how to do it, he could stay alive."

  • "We have been already in Schwarzheide camp, when the bombing of Dresden town began at night all of a sudden. The Schwarzheide is situated about 50-60 kilometers away from Dresden town. When we looked to the South we saw this great red blaze over Dresden and the ground was trembling there too. That’s how dreadful the bombing was. The very next day we heard the news about how terrible it was. It was the first time when we saw the SS officer being obviously shocked. It left a huge impact on them. Today, we remember only how the people were suffering, how bad it was for them, but it was probably for good reason. The Germans, especially the SS officers still believed that they can win the war; that the victory is in their hands. Only after this bombing we recognized their fear from knowing they were wrong."

  • "When the Fascist started to cal the Jews bad names, I remember once one of my class mates, whose family owned a grocery shop in town, was shouting at me on our way from school : ´Jew, you’ll become a screw.´ Later after I returned back from the concentration camp I could admit that he was right. I hope I don’t need to be concrete..."

  • "We used to get up very early in the mornings. At 4 am or at 5 am. The first thing in the morning we did was the lining up. We wanted to wash up first, but most of the people were still exhausted from the night that they just skipped it. I always washed myself, no matter what. That was one of the things the Scouting taught me. You have to wash yourself; you have to brush your teeth or boots. To be honest I didn’t really clean my shoes though, but washing my face or cleaning my teeth, that was essential for me. It helped me to think positive."

  • "The Jewish associate came to my father once and told him: ´You have two sons, so one of them could go to that farm.´ It has been agreed, that it would be me for three months and then we would change. When I recall it now, the time we spent in Lípa town saved us from the Nazism. Back then in Český Brod town, when I was saying good bye to my family, I used to tell them: ´Don’t worry, I’ll be back in three months.´ None of us knew that it was forever. Not even three months after our arrival to Lípa town new order came. The transports of Jews to Terezín and further to the east began. Therefore I’ve never seen my brother and my parents again. On June 1st 1942, the transport train from Český Brod town to Terezín left, but three days before that the assassination of R. Heydrich had been carried out. This, of course didn’t stay without a punishment. The Germans ordered a special treatment for people who were on the transport trains to Terezín. Instead of to Terezín they took them to Lublin town. Women and elderly men went to the gas chambers and the rest of the people could work on the road constructions. But their living conditions were so poor, that most of them died in about two months anyway. That’s how my family ended up."

  • "When I got out of the hospital, I had to go and find myself some job. But I didn’t know where to go, because all of my contacts were gone already. At the end I got more or less patronage job by the Leichenkommando. I was the ´dead body carrier´. It had some good sides too. For each man who died in the house and I took it away (actually there were the too of us, because it would have been too heavy for one person), I got an extra portion of soup. So when I took out two or three dead bodies, I got two or three soups. And that was quite an allowance. I didn’t get dollars anymore, but I got soups instead."

  • "Only people who were allowed some extra portions were able to get some cigarettes too. Those were mostly people who were in charge of each house. People like the ´Blockälteste´ - the chiefs of each block could get cigarettes for an example in exchange with portion of soup or piece of bread. Or they used their friends who knew how to get cigarettes. Of course I wasn’t able to buy something in advance and save it for later. We had to buy it and then eat it right away. If I had some extra cigarettes, I took five more of them and I could exchange it for extra portion of soup. I could share the cigarettes with somebody with the intention, that when he’ll have something extra too, he’ll share it back with me."

  • "During the morning we arrived to Schwarzheide where a huge factory producing the synthetic gas was. On our way from the train station to the houses we were supposed to be staying, the warning disturbed us. We saw all the people running out of the factory into the shelters, where they could hide from the bombing. We were kind of laughing inside seeing the Germans running away. We only laughed once though, because regarding our previous bombing experience we were in a hurry to hide too. All together we have experienced four air attacks, and one of them was really very long. It was really dreadful air attack and it basically destroyed the whole factory. We were terrified from the attacks, because we were not allowed to go to hide to the shelters. We stayed inside the houses that we lived. We used to open all windows to prevent them from breaking due to the blast waves. We have just lain down on the floor and all we could use for our protection were our meal plates. We covered our heads with them to protect them from the bomb shells. It was quite naive, but it helped us to feel better at least."

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„At the end, I got more or less patronage job by the Leichenkommando. I was the dead body carrier.“

Oldřich Stránský
Oldřich Stránský
zdroj: sbírka Post bellum, foto Vavřinec Menšl

Oldřich Stránský was born in the town of Most to a multilingual Jewish family. During his childhood, he spoke German, but his parents, who were influenced by T. G. Masaryk and their first Republic ideas decided to send him to Czech school. During the mid-1920´s the Stránský family moved to the town of Český Brod, where his father took over the family business. Oldřich Stránský and his brother attended the Scout organization. Stránský stated that „it influenced his life.“ The Nazi occupation meant that the Stránský family would meet the as the rest of the Jewish population. Their family business was Aryanized and Oldřich Stránský was forced to leave the technical college when he was nineteen so he could work as a laborer. On June 22nd, 1941 he was transported into the first Jewish concentration camp of the protectorate located in the village of Lípa by the town of Havlíčkův Brod. He never saw his parents and his brother again - they were taken away to the Terezín ghetto after the R. Heydrich assassination. Very soon after that they were transported further to the East and later died in the Polish annihilation camp called Majdanek. Oldřich Stránský was also transported to Terezín in September of 1943 and in December of 1943 he was included in 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 was saved by mere coincidences: he met a friend who told him all about the life in Auschwitz. After a while, he was given a job there among the Leichenkommando, which meant the dead body carrier. He also found one hundred and twenty dollars sewn into the coat he was given. He later used this money to buy some food. Oldřich Stránský managed to pass the selection, supervised by Josef Mengele and on June 30th, 1944 and was able to leave Auschwitz. Two weeks later he arrived at the forced labor camp in Schwerzheide in Saxony. Oldřich Stránský lived to see the liberation of the Sachsenhausen camp on April 22nd, 1945. After the war, Oldřich Stránský participated in the displacement of one of the German villages in 1946. Despite the fact, that during this operation no violence occurred, watching the people leaving their home left such a strong impact on him that he couldn’t completely agree with the displacement any longer. After 1948, he worked as a constructor and designer and he never became a member of the KSČ (Communist party of Czechoslovakia). 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 from 1998 and helped negotiate the compensation for the victims of Nazism. Oldřich Stránský passed away on July 18th, 2014.