Oldřich Stránský

Oldřich Stránský (1921–2014) was a Czech engineer and designer and a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

After the Nazi occupation, the family business was confiscated (Aryanized), Oldřich had to abandon his studies at the industrial school and start working as an auxiliary worker. In June 1941, he was deported to the Lípa concentration camp near Havlíčková Brod. His family was later taken to the Terezín ghetto and murdered in the Majdanek extermination camp.

In 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz via Terezín. There he managed to survive by working as a corpse carrier (Leichenkommando). In the summer of 1944, he was transferred to a labour camp at the Schwarzheide synthetic gasoline factory and later to Sachsenhausen, where he was liberated by the Soviet Army. He returned to Prague and worked as a designer and draftsman for the rest of his life.

After the fall of the communist regime, he became involved in several associations of former prisoners of war and anti-fascist fighters; he was an official of the Czech Union of Freedom Fighters. In his position, he helped secure compensation for victims of Nazism and sought to reconcile Czechs and Germans. He was dismissed from his position by communist members of the association on the pretext that he had written a courtesy letter to Bernd Posselt, chairman of the Sudetenland German Landsmanship.