Jan GAJDOS

Jan Gajdoš was one of the most successful Czechoslovakians in gymnastics before the War, but he also was an excellent athlete in track & field, skiing, figure skating, diving, handball, and football. In World War II, one of the most prominent leaders of the Czech resistance, he was arrested in 1943 and sentenced to death. As the Allied front came near, the Nazis started the prisoners on a "death march" from the concentration camps to the labor camp Zwickau. Gajdoš survived the march, but his health was so severely damaged that he died at the end of the war, shortly after the liberation of the concentration camp.