Work set people free, Arbeit Macht Frei, so he worked and hoped he would be set free
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Karel Veselý was born on the 5thof December 1916 in Blatná, Czechoslovakia. His father served in the army during the First World War and following the formation of Czechoslovakia he worked as an assistant at the local seat of administration in Blatná. His mother was a housewife. Karel went to high school in Strakonice and in 1935 started studying medicine at the Charles University in Prague. In 1938 he left for an internship in France and returned a year later. Shortly afterwards, on the 17thof November 1939, he was arrested at the Švehla dormitories. He and other university students were shortly detained in the Ruzyně riding hall and subsequently transported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was held until the 19thof January 1942. Following his release, he started working as a laboratory technician in a hospital in Strakonice. In 1945 he actively participated in an organization called Niva in Škvořetice, which was a part of the resistance organization Předvoj (‘Vanguard’), and even witnessed the liberation of southern Bohemia by the American Army. After the war he successfully graduated medical school, moved to Prague, and in 1946 he started working at the internal medicine clinic where he stayed until 1954. Afterwards he worked in Hodonín and in 1960 he moved back to Prague and worked in Krč. Karel Veselý, ninety-eight years old, lived in Prague as of 2015.
