Twice I was to be executed, and I am still here
Oldřich Jedlička was born in 1922 in Bořetice. During the war he was doing forced labour in the BMW automobile factory in Frankfurt am Main. He was arrested for his involvement in sabotage acts and he was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp where he worked in a quarry. In March 1943 he was transported to Dachau where he worked in a factory which produced airplane engines. He also spent some time in the satellite camps Kottern and Allach. The American bombardment began in spring 1945 as the front was approaching. The Nazis fled and the remaining guards were marching the prisoners out of the camp in rows of five. The liberation came while they were in the town of Pfronten. Oldřich Jedlička remained in the Austrian Alps for two more months and then he returned home to Moravia via Pilsen and Prague. After the end of the war he was decorated with the Memorial Cross. He began working for the state railways. By marrying his fiancée he married into the family of Petr Křivka, a resistance fighter from the western front and one of the bodyguards of Edvard Beneš in exile. Křivka started organizing anti-Communists resistance and Oldřich Jedlička began to be involved in his group. However, the StB Secret Police had set up their agents in the group and their activity was found out. Oldřich subsequently spent thirteen long years in prison and in the forced labor camps in Bytíz and Vojna. His marriage broke up after his release. He continued working in uranium mines, this time in Dolní Rožínka. He has two sons and he lives in the old people’s home in Brod nad Dyjí.
