Josef Bryks

In 2009, two historians found out about the secret burial in Motol in 1965 of the urn containing Bryks' ashes. With this information, his British widow, Gertrude Bryksová, was able to visit his grave, 52 years after his death.

In 2007, Česká televize made a documentary about Bryks, Muž, který přecenil českou duši aneb Útěky Josefa Brykse ("The Man Who Overestimated the Czech Soul or The Escapes of Josef Bryks").

In 2006, a court in Prague finally exonerated him of his false convictions.

On 28 October 2006, the Czech Republic gave Bryks its highest award, the Order of the White Lion, military division, 2nd class. In 2007 the Czech television made a documentary film Muž, který přecenil českou duši aneb Útěky Josefa Brykse (English: "A Man Who Overestimated the Czech Soul" or "Escapes of Josef Bryks"). The film includes an interview with his widow Gertrude. In 2008 the Czech Republic posthumously promoted Bryks to Brigadier General.

In 2004, Bryks was honoured with the "Award of the City of Olomouc" for "bravery and courage during the Second World War". A memorial plaque was unveiled outside 5 Hanáckého pluku, Olomouc, where Bryks was living with his wife and daughter when the StB arrested him in 1948.

Bryks was rehabilitated after the November 1989 Velvet Revolution. On 29 May 1991, the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic posthumously promoted Bryks to colonel. A memorial plaque to him in front of the local war memorial at his birthplace in Lašťany was unveiled on 4 June 1994.

Bryks' remains were not released to his family. The Communists secretly cremated him. Eight years later, in 1965, they buried his ashes in a cemetery in the Motol district of Prague.

Bryks resumed his resistance, but his health worsened. On 11 August 1957, he suffered a massive heart attack. He died in the prison hospital at Ostrov nad Ohří. The Communist authorities notified his wife in England in a brief telephone call, in which they gave her no further details.

Finally he was moved to a prison in Ostrov nad Ohří in western Bohemia and made to work in a uranium mine called Rovnost (The Czech word for "Equality"). Here prisoners were paid a small wage for their work. Bryks worked hard, exceeding his work quotas, and sent his wage to help support his sick father and his wife and daughter. But in December 1955, the Communists banned Bryks from sending money to his family.

On 6 November 1950, Bryks was transferred to a prison at Opava in Czech Silesia. There were other former RAF political prisoners, included Karel Janoušek. Bryks was insubordinate and resisted the prison authorities. On 18 June 1952, he was transferred to Leopoldov Prison, a converted 17th-century fortress in Slovakia. There he continued to resist the prison authorities, and he was again accused of planning to escape.

Bryks was retried on 2 September 1949. By now the communists controlled the courts. He was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He was stripped of his rank and medals and expelled from the air force. His wife obtained an exit visa for herself and their young daughter, stating that it was to pay her parents in England a short visit. In fact, she left Czechoslovakia for the duration of the communist era, and did not return until 2009.

After his conviction, Bryks was held first in Pankrác, in the same prison where the Gestapo had held him in 1944. On 17 August 1949, he was transferred to Bory prison in Plzeň. On 18 April, the prison authorities announced that they had uncovered a plan for a prison uprising and mass escape. Bryks was among those accused of the allaged plot. He was tried on 11 May 1950 and found guilty. His sentence was extended with 20 years hard labour and he was fined Kčs 20,000. His wife protested to the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slánský, but received no answer.

Bryks' air force career continued while a democratic coalition ruled the Third Czechoslovak Republic. But in February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) seized power in a coup d'état. Bryks was deemed "politically unreliable" and on 9 March was placed on enforced leave and transferred to the military reserve force. His political opinions resulted in his superior officer, Colonel Václav Fuksa, writing that Bryks was "untrustworthy for his political irresponsibility and for the lack of understanding of the ideology of People's Democracy".

Just after midnight on the night of 2–3 May 1948, the StB secret police arrested Bryks at his home in Olomouc. He was charged with involvement in an alleged attempt by other former RAF airmen, including Air Marshal Karel Janoušek, to escape to the West. Bryks was court-martialled in Prague between 14 and 16 July 1948 and was found not guilty, because communists did not yet control these courts. But the prosecutor appealed and Bryks remained in prison.

In April 1946, Ealing Studios released Basil Dearden's war film The Captive Heart. In it, Michael Redgrave played a Czechoslovak officer based on Bryks, Rachel Kempson is a young widow based on Gertrude Dellar, and Basil Radford is the PoW camp's Senior British Officer (SBO) who protects the Czechoslovak officer.

The next day, he was moved to Oflag IV-C at Colditz Castle in Saxony. This was a high-security prison for PoWs who had repeatedly escaped from other camps. There he remained until the United States Army liberated the camp on 16 April 1945.

Bryks returned to RAF Cosford in England to recover from his captivity and Gestapo torture. He learnt that his wife Marie in Czechoslovakia had divorced him in his absence, had remarried, and in April 1945 had committed suicide. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, Bryks went to see Gertrude Dellar and proposed to her. They were married on 18 June.

In August 1945, Bryks underwent further surgery for injuries from his Gestapo interrogation. In June 1946, he had surgery to remove a piece of shrapnel that had been embedded in the floor of his mouth when he was shot down in June 1941.

On 6 October 1945, Bryks returned to Czechoslovakia with his wife Gertrude. He resumed his Czechoslovak Air Force career, but his injuries, and particularly his hearing loss, prevented him from serving as a pilot. He was posted to the Military Aviation Academy at Olomouc, where he taught English and the theory of flight. He was promoted to captain in September 1945, staff captain in December 1945 and major in May 1946. Also in 1946, Gertrude bore Bryks a daughter, Sonia.

Months before Bryks was first sent to Stalag Luft III, preparations had been started for a mass escape of 200 PoWs, now commemorated as the Great Escape. Bryks joined in the preparations, which included completing a long tunnel code named "Harry". On the night of 23/24 March 1944, "Harry" was completed, and PoWs started leaving through it in pairs. Bryks was one of the men listed to escape, but before his turn came, the guards discovered the tunnel exit just outside the perimeter fence.

In July 1944, the RAF promoted Bryks to flight lieutenant. Unfortunately the official letter sent from the UK via the Red Cross to tell Bryks of his promotion revealed his real name and nationality.

The Gestapo interrogated Bryks, told him his family in Bohemia and Moravia had been arrested and that he would be executed for treason. On 1 September 1944, he was brought to Gestapo headquarters in Petschek Palace in Prague. In due course, he was also held at Pankrác Prison and Loreta military prison. Twenty-three other Czechoslovak members of the RAFVR were also being held in these prisons. They were repeatedly interrogated and told that under German military law they were traitors and would be executed.

Germany did not revoke the threat of execution, but the Gestapo did return the Czechoslovaks to PoW camps. On 22 September 1944, Bryks was brought to Stalag Luft I near Barth in Western Pomerania.

On 4 March 1943, Polish workers in the camp helped Bryks and a British officer, Squadron Leader Morris, to escape. The pair hid in a sewage tank that was mounted on a cart to empty the camp's latrines, wearing masks to try to protect them from the sewage. Members of the secret Armia Krajowa ("Home Army" or AK) hid them in a farmhouse. There they met Flight Lieutenant Černý, who had escaped via a tunnel the night before. Their plan was to travel via Warsaw to Danzig, and there board a ship to neutral Sweden.

A fortnight later, Bryks and Černý were lodging with a Polish widow, Mrs Błaszkiewiczowá, who had two young children and lived in a village several kilometres outside Warsaw. A collaborator told the German authorities, so on 2 June 1943 the Gestapo surrounded Mrs Błaszkiewiczowá's house and arrested everyone inside. They took Bryks, Černý and Mrs Błaszkiewiczowá to Pawiak prison, and hanged Mrs Błaszkiewiczowá for helping enemy pilots.

Bryks was then sent to Stalag Luft III, near Sagan in Lower Silesia. The camp's SBO, Group Captain Herbert Massey, sent a medical report to the UK authorities. On 10 October 1943, Bryks was transferred to the British military hospital at Stalag VIII-B in Upper Silesia. He underwent surgery on 7 November and was returned to Stalag Luft III on 23 December.

Bryks had been on the run for 11 days and had travelled 300 kilometres (190 miles) south from Dössel before being caught. On 5 May 1942, he was taken to Darmstadt and held by the Gestapo. He was returned to Oflag VI-B at Dössel, where he was treated in the camp's infirmary from 8 May to 10 June.

By 20 July 1942, Bryks had been transferred to Oflag VI-A near Soest in Westphalia. He was held in solitary confinement from 12 August, but fellow prisoners smuggled razor blades to him hidden inside bread. With these, he cut a hole in the wooden floor of his cell and tunnelled to the German quarters. On 17 August he escaped through the tunnel, wearing only pyjamas, a sweater and a blanket.

Then on 1 October Bryks was posted to No. 12 Operational Training Unit at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, which taught light bomber aircrew. On 11 November, he was posted to the Headquarters Ferry Pool at RAF Kemble in Gloucestershire, which worked with the non-combatant Air Transport Auxiliary. On 1 January 1941, he was transferred to No. 6 Maintenance Unit at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire as a test pilot.

On 23 April 1941, Bryks was at last posted to a combat squadron. He spoke good English thanks to his secondary school studies in Olomouc. He was posted not to one of the RAF's Czechoslovak squadrons but to No. 242 Squadron RAF, which was commanded by Douglas Bader and had a large Canadian contingent. At the time, it flew Hurricane Mk IIb aircraft as night fighters, so Bryks was trained in night flying and navigation.

242 Squadron's rôle was changed to Circus offensives over German-occupied Europe, escorting RAF bombers with the purpose of drawing a Luftwaffe fighter attack. On 17 June 1941, the squadron took part in Circus 14. This was a late afternoon attack on Lille in northern France by 23 Bristol Blenheim bombers of 18, 105 and 110 Squadrons, escorted by 19 Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires. A large force of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters from I, II and III/Jagdgeschwader 26, led by flying ace Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Galland, plus Bf 109s from III/Jagdgeschwader 2 attacked the formation, shooting down 13 of the 40 RAF aircraft.

On 8 October 1941, Bryks was transferred to Oflag VI-B at Dössel in Westphalia. There again he advised the SBO of his true identity. The PoWs' Escape Committee authorised a team of four men, including Bryks, to dig a 10-metre (33 ft) escape tunnel through frozen clay. On the night of 19/20 April 1942, three Poles and three Czechoslovaks escaped through the tunnel in pairs. Bryks was one of them, paired with a fellow Czechoslovak, Flight Lieutenant Otakar Černý.

On 20 January 1940, Bryks escaped from Bohemia and Moravia. He passed illegally through Slovakia and into Hungary. He was arrested in Hungary on 26 January and held in jail in Budapest until 4 April, when he was extradited to Slovakia. He escaped, traveled through Hungary again, reached Yugoslavia, and on 17 April 1940 he reported to the French Consulate in Belgrade.

On the day that Bryks qualified as a fighter pilot, the United Kingdom and France signed the Munich Agreement that forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. On 15 March 1939, Germany occupied the remainder of Bohemia and Moravia, and the resulting Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was forced to dissolve its army and air force.

In the meantime, Bryks' girlfriend, Marie Černá, became pregnant. On 18 April 1939, Bryks and Černá got married and her father, a butcher, gave Bryks a job as his assistant. The baby, a daughter, died two days after being born. Until the German invasion of Poland, Bryks secretly helped Czechoslovak pilots to escape to Poland. In December 1939, Bryks got a job as a civil servant at the Ministry of the Interior, but after three days he resigned.

In October 1935, Bryks joined the Czechoslovak Army. He started his service in a cavalry regiment in Košice. At the same time, he studied at a school for cavalry officers in Pardubice until July 1936. From October 1936 to August 1937, he studied at the Military Academy in Hranice, where he transferred from the cavalry to the air force. He was promoted to lieutenant and specialized as an aerial observer. After his training, he was posted to the 5th Observation Squadron of the 2nd "Dr Edvard Beneš" Aviation Regiment, stationed in Prague. From October 1937, he trained as a pilot in Prostějov. On 30 September 1938, he graduated and was posted to the 33rd Fighter Squadron at Olomouc, where he flew Avia B-534 fighter aircraft.

The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was subject to Nazi Germany, whose authorities deemed anyone from the protectorate who served in Allied forces to be a traitor. He could therefore be executed, and his family would suffer reprisals. Therefore, Bryks assumed the identity of "Joseph Ricks", born in 1918 in Cirencester, a Gloucestershire market town about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from where he had been spent two months at RAF Kemble.

Josef Bryks, MBE, (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjozɛv brɪks]; 18 March 1916– 11 August 1957) was a Czechoslovak cavalryman, fighter pilot, prisoner of war and political prisoner.

Josef Bryks was born in 1916 in Lašťany, a village about 12 kilometres (7 miles) northeast of Olomouc in Moravia. His parents František and Anna (née Nesvetrová) were farmers. Bryks was the seventh of eight children, but only four survived to adulthood. Bryks studied at the Commercial Academy in Olomouc and passed his Matura (final exam of secondary education) in June 1935.