Karel Klapálek

After World War I, Klapálek became a commissioned officer and helped to establish the army of the newly-founded First Czechoslovak Republic.

He served in Plzeň, Prague, Michalovce, and Uzgorod, where he met his future wife Olga Košutová (born 8 March 1901).

Olga Klapálková kept a diary, which later provided the basis for a book in which she described life in a Nazi concentration camp in Svatobořice near Kyjov, where she was held in the Second World War.

After Nazi Germany imposed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, Klapálek joined a Czech military anti-Nazi resistance organization Obrana národa (Protection of the Nation) in České Budějovice.

[1] The battalion fought in the Allied invasion of Syria and Lebanon in June and July 1941, and was then stationed on the Turkish border in August.

From October to December 1941 the battalion fought in the defence of Tobruk under the command of the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade.

[2] In July 1943 the regiment was transferred by sea to Great Britain, where it became part of the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade.

[4] Klapálek then successfully led the army in the Battle of Malá Fatra, crossing of Váh and the liberation of Moravia.

Along with Svoboda he supported the Communist coup d'état of February 1948, by establishing the Central Office of the National Front (Czech: Ústřední výbor Národní Fronty).

After the high-profile political trial of Rudolf Slánský in 1952, the Communists confiscated all of Klapálek's property and imprisoned him in Valdice Prison.

Klapálek was released from prison in 1956 after the Soviet marshals Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev spoke in his defence, but he was not rehabilitated until 1968.