Říkali jim španěláci – Rajlich Jiří (2022)

More than 2,200 Czechoslovak citizens fought in the International Brigades in Spain. Among foreign volunteers, they formed the eighth largest contingent – after the French, Italians, Poles, Americans, Germans, Yugoslavs, and Belgians. They were simply called 'Spanish'. This might suggest that their fates were more or less the same, or at least similar. Although most of them were drawn to the Iberian Peninsula by similar motives, the reality, especially the subsequent one, was significantly more colorful in the turbulent 20th century. The vast majority of those who survived Spain, the battles on the fronts of World War II, and Nazi prisons and concentration camps returned to their homeland in 1945, where a popular-democratic regime began to emerge. Many of them were members of the Communist Party, and it is not surprising that many of them began to form its praetorian guard even then. From all the 'Spanish' fates, we have selected four – three Czech and one Slovak, primarily communist. They were equally extraordinary, but to a large extent, they were quite characteristic of the fates of other 'Spanish' fighters: certainly dramatic, and in all cases full of ups and downs. Bohuslav Laštovička, Ladislav Holdoš, Josef…