The photograph from the interview of Karel Borský shows him shortly after joining the first Czechoslovak independent field battalion in Buzuluk in 1942. The picture was taken in the village of Veseloje, Karel Borský is marked with a cross.
Karel Borský was born in 1921 in Fryštát, now part of Karviná, as Kurt Biheller.
After the occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was deported in the first transport of Jews from our territory to a concentration camp near a little Polish town of Nisko on San in October 1939. He escaped from the camp to the Polish territory occupied by the Soviet Union and settled in Lvov (Lviv).
After being deported by the Soviet secret police, he was imprisoned in the Ivanovo camp and put to forced labour. He was only saved by the establishment of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in the USSR. He lived through its entire combat history with it.
After the war he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and changed his name. In the 1950s, he was persecuted and briefly imprisoned for his Jewish origin. In 2000 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
The interview was filmed on 6 September 1996 in Prague.