Králíky, Famo-Werke factory
Pivovarská, 561 69 Králíky, Czech Republic
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An unbinding letter

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In 1943, Stanislava Šprincová became a forced laborer in the Famo Company in the border town of Grulich, (today Králíky), which produced components for German military aircraft. In addition to the forced laborers and the regular employees of the company, concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war worked in the factory as well. Stanislava Šprincová spoke English and French, and thus she began to exchange letters with a Scottish prisoner of war. Eventually, because of the letters, she ended up in jail: "One Scotchman sent me a very interesting letter and so I responded. The boys who worked as electricians in the factory would pass on the letters. However, I foolishly took one letter home to Olomouc to show it to my parents. And when I went back to Králíky, I forgot that letter at home. When the Gestapo later came to arrest my father, they found that letter in the drawer. It was a combination of a number of coincidences and bad luck. They found the letter and so they arrested me. They asked me where I met that prisoner of war. I told them that I didn’t even know him in person. I tried to downplay it but that wouldn’t help me. I tried to protect the electricians who had passed the letters. Mrs. Šprincová was eventually punished for her contacts with foreign POWs. On November 4th, 1944, she was sentenced to eleven months and taken to a prison for juveniles in Vienna.

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Stanislava Šprincová

Stanislava Šprincová

Doc. JUDr. Stanislava Šprincová, CSc., née Kavanová, was born in 1924 in Olomouc. Her father Antonín Kavan, who served as a member of the municipal council, was arrested shortly after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and imprisoned for five months. He was arrested by the Gestapo again in 1944 and taken to the Small Fortress in Terezín. Shortly after the liberation of the country he succumbed to typhoid fever in the quarantine station in Roudnice nad Labem. Just before her planned graduation from secondary school in 1943, Stanislava Šprincová was drafted to do forced labour. In 1944, while in Králíky, she was arrested for innocent correspondence with a Scottish prisoner of war. She was detained in a prison for juvenile delinquents in Vienna, where she experienced the last months of the war and the accompanying bombardment of the city. After the war she married Zdeněk Šprinc, a man who is credited with playing a great role in the reestablishment of the university in Olomouc. Zdeňka was of great assistance to him in this undertaking. She studied law in Brno and economic geography in Prague and since 1959 she has been a lecturer at the Department of Geography at the Faculty of Science of the Palacký University in Olomouc, specializing in socioeconomic geography. Today, she lives in Olomouc.

Králíky, Famo-Werke factory

Available in: English | Česky

In 1942, the Famo Company leased the building of the weaving factory of Valentin Walter in Králíky, which had been built in 1889. The Famo Company in Králíky, (Grulich in German), produced components for German military aircraft during the war and in addition to ordinary employees, it employed Czech forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates. Ten of the Czech forced laborers worked in the nearby artillery fortress Hůrka (Berghöhe), where they were engaged in preparatory work for the underground relocation of the Famo plant. The artillery fortress Hůrka was built in the years 1936 - 1938 and it was supposed to constitute one of the pillars of the Czechoslovak defense fortification system. After the war, the factory premises served from 1946 - 1956 as a warehouse and from 1956 to 1998, it housed the Tesla Holešovice works engaged in the manufacture of bulbs, fluorescent lamps and discharge lamps. Today, the entire area of the factory is being offered for sale.

Králíky, Famo-Werke factory

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An unbinding letter

An unbinding letter

Stanislava Šprincová
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