Třináct let za ostnatým drátem. Tragický osud a smrt Josefa Brykse, vězně dvou totalitních režimů
Thirteen years behind barbed wire

Summary/Abstract: Josef Bryks, a Czechoslovak fi ghter pilot who served with the RAF, was shot down in June 1941 over Germanoccupied territory and was arrested soon afterwards. He spent the rest of the war in German detention camps and prisons, from which he constantly tried to escape by all manner of means. He survived the war with the reputation of a “chronic escapee” and returned to England, from where he eventually took his wife Trudie to Czechoslovakia. Bryks’s military career was interrupted by the Communist takeover of 1948. In May 1948 he was arrested and in February 1949 he was sentenced to 10 years hard labour. He passed through several camps and prisons, causing trouble wherever he went, which led to his original sentence being lengthened. In the end he had become a Communist slave. He died of a severe heart attack in the Rovnost labour camp in August 1957. He was 41 years old. The widow of this prisoner of two totalitarian regimes, Trudie Bryks, fought long and hard for his rehabilitation after 1989. Only in 2009 was she able to place flowers on her husband’s grave.

• Details
• Contents