My uncle never came back from his total deployment. I know he ended up in the gulag
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Olga Andrýsová, née Tomáštiková, was born on 16 February 1935 in Vsetín. Her father worked as a worker in the glassworks of S. Reich and Co., while her mother was employed in the Vsetín Armoury. She often spent her childhood with her grandparents Dolejší in Karolinka (Karolinina Hut’), where her uncle Karel Dolejší also lived. He was deployed to forced labour in Germany during the Second World War, from where he never returned. The family did not receive any official news about his fate. It was not until 1955 that information appeared on the Free Europe broadcasts that Karel Dolejší was imprisoned in the Vorkuta prison camp, which was allegedly revealed by a fellow prisoner. Despite the efforts of his parents, who asked the Czechoslovak Red Cross for help, the search for him did not yield any results. Another tragic fate in the family befell Josef Plánka. In 1948, he founded the Blaník resistance group, which was quickly exposed by the Communists, and Josef Plánka was arrested. He was sentenced to four years in prison, but in 1951 he died while escaping from a labour camp in Jáchymov. The witness attended a girls’ municipal school in Vsetín and in 1950 she entered the gymnasium. In 1953, the students of the seventh grade, including the witness, were forced to graduate early due to the reorganization of the education system. The students rebelled against this decision, especially after the removal of their favorite professor. The students were to be punished for this rebellion, but the regional committee later lifted the punishments and all were allowed to take the graduation exam. In 1958 she successfully graduated from the Faculty of Science in Brno, where she specialized in biology. After a short stint in education, she worked at the Research Institute of Organic Syntheses in Rosice near Pardubice and obtained a second doctorate. She worked at this institute until her retirement in 1990. At the time of the filming (March 2024) the witness lived in Česká Skalice.
