Drahoslava Lošťáková (born Dostálová)

Drahoslava Lošťáková, born Dostálová, was born in 1922 in Olomouc. Her brother, František, fled the country which had been occupied by the Germans shortly before, in May 1939. He made it to France and after its surrender to Nazi Germany he was evacuated to Great Britain. In Britain, he became a pilot in the 311th Czechoslovak bomber squadron. He spent three years on the British Isles, married and became a father. His daughter’s name was Joy. He perished in an air-plane accident on April 24, 1943. In 1942, Drahoslava Lošťáková was drafted for slave labor in Steyr, Austria. After she returned home from Austria, she, her parents and her sister were arrested by the Gestapo and detained in an internment camp in Svatobořice. Their arrest was part of a sweeping operation called “Emigranten” or simply “E”. After the assassination of Heydrich, all close relatives of those men who fled abroad and were suspected of joining the allied armies were interned. Unlike her sister, Libuše, who was released after six months due to a severe inflammation of the pleura, she, her mother and her father spent the rest of the war in the Svatobořice internment camp. Her father Alois was separated from the family and taken to Brno. He was later transferred to Auschwitz where he died on February 25, 1943. On April 14, 1945, Drahoslava Lošťáková and her mother were released from the camp. After the war, she worked in several professions and she currently lives in Uherské Hradiště.

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