Dr. Ottokar Anton Franz (Otakar) Flanderka
Personalia
Born:
Died:
Profession:
Persecution:
Imprisonment July 30, 1940 – May 16, 1941,
Dachau Concentration Camp May 16, 1941 – November 10, 1942,
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp November 10, 1942 – March 30, 1945,
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp March 30, 1945 – April 24, 1945,
Murdered on April 24, 1945
KZ Number:
Honors:
The National Order of the Legion of Honor
Curriculum Vitae
Ottokar Anton Franz Flanderka was born in Reichenau an der Knieschna in Bohemia [today: Rychnov nad Kněžnou in the Czech Republic] as the legitimate son of attorney Friedrich Flanderka and his wife Maria, née Haudek. After elementary school, he attended the high school in Reichenau an der Knieschna, where he graduated in 1913. He then moved to Vienna and studied law for one semester at the University of Vienna before being drafted into World War I and demobilized in 1918 as a first lieutenant in the artillery.
After the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the dissolution of the dual monarchy, and the expulsion of the House of Habsburg, he went to Paris, where he continued his legal studies at the Sorbonne University.
Ottokar Flanderka retained his Czech citizenship and worked in Paris as a legal representative for the Austrian company Fez-Fabriken AG. In 1926, he published the legal treatise *Le contrôle de la constitutionnalité des lois en Tchécoslovaquie*. This work is considered an important contemporary account of the functioning of the early Czechoslovak constitutional judiciary.
Ottokar Flanderka became a member of the International Chamber of Commerce, economic attaché and consul general of the Czechoslovak Mission, its legal representative in Paris, and president of the Czechoslovak Colony in Paris. In Paris, he lived with his partner, Marie Jeanneu, at 133 Rue St. Dominique. His sister married a former artillery officer in Vienna; after his father’s death in 1930, his mother also moved to Vienna.
Ottokar Flanderka was a staunch opponent of National Socialism and, following the occupation of Austria and later of what the Nazis called the “Sudetenland,” also helped Czechoslovaks and Jews flee the Nazis and assisted them in transferring their assets to the United States of America.
Following the occupation of “remaining Czechoslovakia” on March 15, 1939, he became a French citizen on April 17, 1939. Following France’s surrender on June 22, 1940, Ottokar Flanderka was arrested by the Gestapo in Paris on July 30, 1940, on charges of “aiding escape and asset diversion,” and was held in pretrial detention in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and Prague.
On May 16, 1941, Ottokar Flanderka was deported to the Dachau concentration camp and transferred from there to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on November 10, 1942. On November 20, 1942, the investigation against him by the Chief Reich Prosecutor at the People's Court was officially closed. However, this did not alter his imprisonment in the concentration camp.
At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he was ill for an extended period before working as a clerk in the infirmary and then at the Berlin-Licherfelde satellite camp and the Heinkel branch camp as a clerk and interpreter for Czech and French.
I can solemnly affirm that he was held as a political prisoner and, as a person and comrade, never, anywhere, violated the ethos of a political prisoner. Moreover: Otakar Flanderka, a man of European and democratic convictions, was one of the finest people I ever had the opportunity to know and hold in high regard. This makes my regret all the more painful and sincere that he died a heroic death in the spring of 1945, just before liberation.
On March 30, 1945, Ottokar Flanderka was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as the Red Army approached.
He [Ottokar Flanderka] explained to me in hours-long, very serious conversations that he had been ordered to Prague (Czechoslovakia) for interrogation, that he had been offered his release in exchange for betrayal, that he had nevertheless remained strong, and that he had suffered terribly. My friend and comrade Dr. Flanderka had been reduced to a human wreck as a result of the treatment he received in Prague.
Ottokar Flanderka died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 24, 1945. A cenotaph was later erected in his honor at the cemetery in Prague 3.
His sister, Maria Bracher, who lived in Vienna, joined the newly founded Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the ÖVP Association of the Politically Persecuted and Defenders of Austria following the liberation of Austria and the restoration of the republic in April and May 1945, respectively.
Places
Residence:
Persecution:
Death Place:
Citations
Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv (WStLA)
Archiv der Universität Wien
Archiv ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich
Arosen Archives
www.myheritage.com
www.vets.cz/vpm/49089-kenotaf-otakar-flanderka/
