Karel Břenek's Resistance Group and the Attack on the Ostrava Labour Authority

On May 18, 1943, a group of resistance fighters led by Karel Břenek, a worker at Vítkovice Ironworks, raided the German labour office at Nádražní Street in Ostrava with the help of weapons they had obtained by robbing a shop in Vítkovice owned by a German named Fuchzwanz. Other people involved in this resistance action were Brenek's uncle Alois, brothers Ferdinand and Bronislav Madry and Horymír Reclík. The raiders burned a large part of the records of persons who were to be sent to forced labour in the Reich (it was not completely restored until the end of the war). A few weeks after the raid, the Gestapo arrested all the resistance fighters except Karel Břenek, who was hiding in Stará Bělá and escaping for almost a year. However, because of the betrayal of Horymír Reclík, who became a Gestapo informer after his arrest, the Gestapo eventually found him. Surrounded in the Mutinas' house in Stará Bělá, Karel Břenek and four companions shot themselves on June 11, 1944.