In the footsteps of Alois Laub
It was Monday, February 19, 1945. Sixteen men from the Příbram region, who had been sentenced to death for their participation in the anti-Nazi resistance, were waiting in a prison in Brandenburg, Germany. The Third Reich was collapsing, the Allies were advancing towards Berlin, and it seemed that the sentence might not even be carried out. But between 1pm and 2pm on that Monday in February, all the men were executed in turn. Among them was Alois Laub, one of the main leaders of the Pribram resistance movement.
1. DISTRICT OFFICE
At the time when Alois Laub worked at the Příbram District Office, the institution was located at today's T. G. Masaryk Square, No. 100 (yellow house on the left).
Alois Laub came to Příbram as a former Czechoslovak Legionnaire. He came from Rokycany, but during the First World War his fate took him to the Eastern Front. After a year in a prisoner of war camp, he enlisted in the emerging Czechoslovak army, was a direct participant in the legendary Battle of Zborov and returned home with the rank of lieutenant. He remained in the army after the war until his unit was disbanded as a result of the Munich Agreement. He retrained and took up the post of chief accounting secretary of the District Office in Příbram.
Alois Laub was involved in the building of the military anti-Nazi organisation Defence of the Nation. He commanded a group with the code name Oliver, which was to be able to take power in the Příbram region in the event of a coup. In May 1940, Laub, at his own request, left his service in the office in order to devote himself fully to underground activities. As part of the Regional National Revolutionary Committee, which included, for example, the teachers', miners' and railwaymen's movements, members of the Oliver group participated in a number of resistance actions.
2. RESIDENCE OF ALOIS LAUB
House in Mánesova Street, no. 350. It was here that the Gestapo arrested Alois Laub on 13 November 1943 at 10.30. The German police ransacked the house.
One of them was the sabotage of a freight cable car that transported ore from Bohutín to the processing plant near the Vojtěch mine in Březové Hory. This action took place on 10 June 1943. Until then, Laub's group had also been engaged in "standard" resistance activities: intelligence about the German armed forces, hiding and assisting persons underground, printing and distributing illegal printed matter, and collecting weapons and explosives.
The Gestapo acquired a confederate in the resistance movement and penetrated the entire network. Arrests began in the Příbram region - and Alois Laub was one of the first to be arrested by the secret police. A total of 165 people were arrested in those days. Cruel interrogations took place in Příbram and Tabor, and the Nazis used rubber truncheons and steel rods to beat the detainees. Alois Laub took all the charges upon himself. Thus, many of his collaborators were not even known to the Gestapo.
3.
One of the Oliver group's sabotages took place in 1943 on a freight cable car that transported ore from Bohutín to the ore processing plant near the Vojtěch mine in Březové Hory.
With other resistance organizers, Laub was transported to Goleniów near Szczecin, where - a year after his arrest - the sentence of the Supreme Court was pronounced upon them. This was followed by transport to Brandenburg near Berlin, where the sixteen men were executed on 19 February 1945. Three months before the end of the war. "This horrific execution was the most massive in a single day in relation to the citizens of Příbram during World War II," recalls historian Josef Velfl.
In 2000, Alois Laub was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in memoriam.
4. VOJTĚCH
After Alois Laub's arrest, the family moved to the parish of St. Vojtech Church, where Alois Laub's brother served as parish priest.
Text: Václav Bešt'ák using texts by Josef Velfl,
Photo: Karolina Ketmanová
