Otakar Jaroš

Otakar Jaroš ( born August 1, 1912 in Louny, † March 8, 1943 in Sokolowo ) was a Czechoslovak officer. He fell in the battle for Sokolowo and became the first foreigner to the highest Soviet military order of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Life

Jaroš was born into the family of a Czech heater of the imperial railway, spent his childhood in Melnik, where he attended high school. After he had broken this education, he graduated from a technical school for electrical engineering in Prague, 1933, the military school for non-commissioned officers in Trnava and 1937 the military academy in Hranice na Moravě. From 1939 he was stationed as a platoon leader telegraphic unit in Prešov.

After the Munich Agreement, he was demobilized and worked in Náchod as a postal worker. In 1939 he fled to Poland to the Soviet Union, where he joined the the emergent Svoboda Army. In 1942 he entered the training camp of the First Czechoslovak battalion in Busuluk in Uralvorland and rose to become the commander of the first company.

Lieutenant Otakar Jaroš fell on 8 March 1943 in the Battle of Sokolowo in the defense of his commander items against a German tank attack near Kharkov. It was the first battle ever, in a foreign unit fought alongside the Red Army against the Wehrmacht.

Honors

Otakar Jaroš was posthumously promoted to captain. Force of the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet him the highest Soviet award Hero of the Soviet Union, and later the Order of Lenin and the Czechoslovak Order of the White Lion was born on 17 March 1943 as the first foreigner granted. His name carry the local school in Sokolowe and the streets in Busuluk, Kharkiv and Poltava. In Melnik there is a monument.