Prague, May 9 (CTK) – Czech Defence Minister Martin Stropnicky bestowed the highest defence sector awards on almost 60 active soldiers and those in retirement, resistance fighters and members of the former Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP) on the occasion of Victory Day (May 8) yesterday.
A number of them were decorated in memoriam.
The PTP battalions were established after the communists seized power in former Czechoslovakia in 1948 and their members were people whom the regime considered “unreliable.” They were abolished in 1954.
The awarded include Major Ivan Gerat, participant in the U.N. missions to Liberia and Iraq.
The decoration also went in memoriam to Lieutenant Colonel Jaroslav Bohac, who was a member of the Czechoslovak Legions in Russia and France during World War One. He was sentenced to prison during the German occupation of the country and he died in prison in consequence of agonising interrogations.
Major-General Frantisek Buerger-Bartos, founder of the resistance group “Bartos,” was also decorated with the same award in memoriam.
During the May anti-Nazi Uprising in Prague, Bartos was chief of staff of the Military Command of Greater Prague.
The Cross of Merit, 1st Degree, was bestowed on Karel Klinovsky, from the Military Academy, for his achievement in the training of units for foreign operations.
Physician Ivan Jerabek, who worked in the Czech field hospital in Basra, Iraq, among others, was promoted to the rank of colonel in retirement.
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