“That was no ceremony at all, nothing, as we were on that construction site, they took us as we were in our working outfits and that was it, we were in the war.”
Rostislav Glajch was born on November 22, 1920, in the town of Kuniv, Ukraine, to Czech parents. He studied at the School of Construction, but his studies were interrupted by the beginning of the war (1941). He was drafted to the Russian army together with all of his classmates. He was almost the only Czech in his unit. He served with the 53rd, and later with the 51st, engineer corps. They were mostly repairing war-damaged bridges or roads. From Kyiv he got to Stalingrad, where he witnessed almost the entire siege of the trapped German armies. Then followed a transfer to the Baltic countries and subsequently to Germany where he saw the end of the war. After the war, he was married and wanted to continue his studies; however, his brother, who served in the Czechoslovak army, didn‘t want to return to Ukraine anymore. Thus, Rostislav Glajch moved to Czechoslovakia in 1947 with his family (his brother and his parents). At first he lived in Žatec, then later in Prague, where he worked for Konstruktiva. Glajch became the director of Konstruktiva before retiring. He joined the Communist party after he came to Czechoslovakia, and never got into any serious conflict with the Communist regime nor did he suffer any persecution.