Marie Stará 1902 - 1942

Born 19.3.1902 in Praha
Died 24.10.1942 in Mauthausen

Biography

The history of the Starý family

Youth and Growing Up

Jaroslav Starý was born on 22 April 1891 in Sobíňov to parents Josef Starý and Josefa Stará. He trained as a gardener. As a 19-year-old he joined the 60th Infantry Regiment in Miskolc, where he served in the 10th Company. After his return from military service he left his home town and settled in Klánovice,[1] where he worked as a gardener. Probably in 1914 he travelled to Great Britain, where he was when the First World War broke out. Jaroslav Starý found himself in a country at war with Austria-Hungary. For his host country he became a potential enemy, which is why in the autumn of 1914 he was interned in a prisoner of war camp.

Service in the British Army

After he was released from ‘internment’, Jaroslav Starý joined the British Army as a volunteer on 2 July 1917. He was admitted to the Royal Regiment in west Kent and ‘after a short period of training’ was posted to India at the end of August 1917. In February 1918 his unit was moved to the city of Quetta on the Afghan border. There he was deployed in the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919.[2]

During this period however, as a citizen of a newly-established country, he sought his discharge from the Royal British Army. His request was granted and, on 19 October, Jarsolav Starý began his journey home, probably arriving around Christmas 1919.

At Home

After his return to Czechoslovakia, Jaroslav Starý once again settled in Klánovice. His gardening business took off, meaning that he could buy a plot of land in neighbouring Šestajovice and build a family home there in 1928. He lived there together with his wife Marie, who was a teacher at the local school in Šestajovice.

Marie Stará, née Hrůzová, was born in Prague. She graduated from teacher training college, where she passed the final exams on 6 June 1921. From 1922 onwards she was an assistant teacher at the primary school in Šestajovice. On 23 January 1937 she was appointed by decree to the post of provisional head teacher, and she continued working in this role until 30 June 1938.

In Šestajovice Jaroslav Starý became an active member of the Czechoslovakian Sokol club.[3] Little by little he took over the role of chairman of District IV of the ‘Barák’ Sokol club. His wife Marie was also active in the Sokol.

War

The lives of the Starý couple were to be altered radically by events in the night of 28 to 29 December 1941. On this night, the ‘Anthropoid’ group, consisting of Sergeant Jan Kubiš and Sergeant Josef Gabčík, were dropped in the area of the Nehvizdy district.[4] Both paratroopers hid their mission equipment in Antonín Sedláček’s garden shed and at daybreak they left the landing site and set off to find the address of their first contact. On 13 January 1942 Jan Kubiš went to Nehvizdy, where he visited the gardener Antonín Sedláček. Together they took all the materials to Sedláček’s house in Nehvizdy. Jan Kubiš used his contact with František Kroutil, which had been arranged by Father František Samek, with whom they had sheltered after their parachute jump, to find out where they actually were. Therefore from the first, František Kroutil proved a helpful Sokol functionary who accompanied the ‘Anthropoid’ group until the end. František Kroutil brought in Břetislav Bauman and Jaroslav Starý ,who lived in the neighbouring village of Šestajovice, to help until the group’s equipment could be moved on. With their help, the weapons and explosives they had brought with them made it to a safe location in Prague. Jaroslav Starý also provided the ‘Anthropoid’ soldiers with a very useful contact to another member of the Sokol club, František Pískáček, who lived in Vysočany.

After the equipment had been moved on, we have no further information about any resistance activities carried out by Sokol functionaries in Nehvizdy, Horoušany and Šestajovice. It seems that the Sokol organisation in Prague involved in the resistance did not need any external help in looking after the members of the ‘Anthropoid’ group, as well as other groups who arrived in the ‘Protectorate’ from the end of March 1942. What the illegal organisation could not prevent, however, was its betrayal by the paratrooper Karel Čurda from the ‘Out Distance’ group,[5] who reported voluntarily to Gestapo headquarters in Prague’ Bredovská Street. The wave of arrests started on 17 June: František Pískáček was arrested on 13 July and, on 15 July, the arrests reached Šestajovice and Horoušany. On this date Břetislav Bauman and Jaroslav Starý were seized.

After Jaroslav Starý’s arrest, his closest relatives tried to do something to save him: connections would be used to buy him out of jail. But regrettably the German, via whom the attempt was being made, withdrew as middle-man when he discovered that the crime was not a commercial one but resistance activity in connection with the attack on the deputy Reich Protector.

At as at yet not determined point in time, Jaroslav Starý’s wife was also arrested. Like the other wives of Sokol resistance fighters who shared the same fate, the arrest took place at the end of August 1942. What happened next was also the same for all of them: on 15 September they were escorted to the police prison of the Prague Gestapo in Theresienstadt (Small Fortress).

On 27 September 1942 both Jaroslav and Marie were sentenced to death in absentia by a summary court-martial.

On 22 October a transport of over 460 men, women and children was dispatched from the Small Fortress in Theresienstadt towards Mauthausen concentration camp. Of these, 264 people were connected to aiding the paratroopers who had assassinated the deputy Reich Protector. The transport arrived at the station in Mauthausen on the following day. After the arrival procedure, during which the head of the concentration camp, SS-Sturmbannführer Franz Ziereis, listened in person to the names and occupations of those sentenced by the ‘Wailing Wall’, they were placed in the room in the camp prison, the so-called Bunker, where they spent the night. Early the next day at 8.30am the name of the first woman was called. She was executed by a shot to the back of the neck from a small calibre pistol. Mrs. Marie Stará was executed in this way at 11.40am; her husband Jaroslav Starý at 2.18pm.

Closing Remarks

The Starý family were among the first helpers of the ‘Anthropoid’ group. They helped Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabčik to move their operational equipment and Jaroslav Starý gave the group a valuable contact, namely the address of the Sokol official in Vysočany, František Pískáček. Through this, ‘Anthropoid’ was able to make full use of the materials with which the group was equipped, and at the same time they were given the address of a loyal Sokol member who was in the resistance and who had close connections to the central Sokol club working in the resistance. We must also admire the fact that none of the Starý family’s close relatives or friends were arrested, although naturally we cannot know whether they knew about their resistance activities.

Vlastislav Janík

 

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