At the Polish school in Karviná-Fryštát, there is a modest memorial plaque to a figure of real consequence in the city’s history: Wacław Olszak.
Who was he? Why was he commemorated, and what did the city he once governed look like?

Education and the Beginnings of Olszak’s Medical Career

Wacław Olszak was born on 29 May 1868, in Šenov (Szonów), in Austrian Silesia, the son of Wacław and Marianna Olszak (née Pasternak).
After completing his secondary education at the gymnasium in Cieszyn in 1889, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna, obtaining in 1895 the degree of Doctor of Medicine (doctor medicinae universae).

After returning to Cieszyn Silesia, he practised as a physician in Karviná, serving the Miners’ Brotherhood Insurance Fund of the Coal Industry (Kasa Bracka Przemysłu Węglowego). From 1909, he was also school doctor for Polish pupils at the gymnasium in Orlová, and he collaborated with a number of Polish social and cultural organisations.

Social and Political Engagement

Olszak was deeply involved in the life of the Polish minority in the Czechoslovak part of Cieszyn Silesia.
He was a member and activist of several organisations, including:

• the Educational Society of the Duchy of Cieszyn (“Macierz Szkolna Księstwa Cieszyńskiego”);
• the Polish Circle in Doubrava (“Ognisko Polskie w Dąbrowie”);
• the Association of Christian Workers “Praca” in Karviná;
• the Union of Silesian Catholics;
• the Union of Poles in Czechoslovakia (“Związek Polaków w Czechosłowacji”). 

He also sat on the National Council of the Duchy of Cieszyn (“Rada Narodowa Księstwa Cieszyńskiego”), the political body that sought to represent Polish interests in the region in the post-war period.
In 1928, he established a scholarship foundation to support pupils from less affluent families.

Mayor of Karviná

Olszak served as mayor of Karviná from 1929 to 1936.
During his tenure, the city hosted several distinguished visitors. In 1930, President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk visited Karviná, and Olszak greeted him in both Polish and Czech, a gesture symbolic of the region’s bilingual character.

After the 1936 elections, he lost the mayoralty to Antonín Krůta.
Thereafter, he continued to practise medicine, especially as a miners’ physician, caring for workers and their families until the outbreak of the Second World War.

When Nazi forces entered the region in September 1939, Olszak – well known as a Polish doctor and community leader – was in grave danger.
He was detained by the Gestapo, interrogated, then released after several days.

According to official records and witness accounts, on 7 September 1939, he was summoned to a local mine, allegedly because of an accident, where he was brutally beaten by Gestapo officers and mine administrators.
He was taken to hospital, where he died on 11 September 1939 from internal bleeding and cerebral haemorrhage caused by severe injuries.

His funeral was deliberately reduced to the minimum by the German authorities.
A crowd of local residents followed the procession, but only a few – his wife, his sons and a priest – were allowed into the cemetery.

Today, Olszak is commemorated each year by the Polish Medical Association in the Czech Republic and by local communities.

Honours and Posthumous Remembrance

In 1938, Wacław Olszak was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for his social and professional contributions.

After the political transition, within the framework of renewed Polish-Czech co-operation, his life and legacy regained due recognition.
Memorial plaques bearing his name were installed on school buildings in Karviná–Fryštát, and the city established the Wacław Olszak Memorial Medal, awarded to individuals who rendered distinguished service to Karviná.
Each year, on the anniversary of his death, flowers are laid at his grave in Karviná-Doly in remembrance of his sacrifice.

Karviná: The City That Sank Beneath the Ground

Were it not for old photographs and a handful of commemorative plaques, it would be hard, today, to imagine Karviná as it once was: a vibrant, bustling city whose heart lay not in the concrete blocks and avenues of modern Karviná, but in the vanished district of Karviná-Doly.
There, between the Church of St Peter of Alcantara, the school, the market square and Dworcowa Street, the pulse of the old town once beat.
It was a city that grew on coal in the nineteenth century, and was devoured by that same coal in the twentieth.

From Ducal Village to Industrial City

Originally a small village by the Olza River, Karviná was first mentioned in 1268, in a charter of Duke Władysław of Opava, as property of the Cistercian Abbey of Rudy.
For centuries, it remained part of the Duchy of Cieszyn, inhabited mainly by Polish-speaking peasants.
Even in the eighteenth century, it was a modest agricultural settlement belonging to the Fryštát estate under Habsburg rule.

Everything changed after the discovery of coal deposits in 1776 near Orlová and Karviná.
From that moment, Cieszyn Silesia entered the industrial age.
By the late nineteenth century, Karviná had become one of the principal coal-mining centres of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1856, the Miners’ Brotherhood Insurance Fund (“Kasa Bracka”) was established, one of the oldest social insurance institutions in the region, providing support for miners and their families.

A City of Labour and Contrasts

With industrial growth, Karviná ceased to be a village and became a city of migrants.
By the late nineteenth century, it had over 12,000 inhabitants, most of them miners and their families.
Yet contrasts sharpened: elegant villas of directors and engineers lined Dworcowa Street and the area near St Peter’s Church, while workers lived in cramped quarters such as Raj and Darkov.
Darkov (Darkov-Lázně), later incorporated into Karviná, was renowned for its sulphur spa, founded in 1866, which attracted patients from across the monarchy.
Nearby Fryštát, a quieter town of medieval origin with municipal rights dating from the Middle Ages, served as the administrative and commercial centre of the area.

Karviná in the Wars and the Interwar Period

After the First World War, the fate of Karviná was dramatically reshaped.
Following the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Polish-Czechoslovak conflict over Cieszyn Silesia broke out in 1919.
Most residents of Karviná identified with Poland: Polish schools, parishes and cultural societies thrived there.
However, in 1920, the Conference of Ambassadors placed the city within Czechoslovakia.

Despite ethnic tensions, Karviná continued to develop as a mining centre. During the interwar years, Polish, Czech and German schools, newspapers and cultural organisations coexisted, reflecting the region’s complex identity.

Collapse and the “City That Sank”

After the Second World War, the Czechoslovak authorities intensified coal mining.
While this provided jobs, it also led to catastrophic land subsidence.
Mining directly beneath the city caused severe deformation of the terrain: the old market square, town hall, Protestant church and entire residential districts sank by as much as 30 metres.

By the 1960s, Old Karviná had virtually disappeared.
Only the leaning Church of St Peter of Alcantara survived, its tilted silhouette becoming a symbol of the city’s fate.

A new Karviná was built several kilometres away, centred on Fryštát, which now forms the historic core of the modern city. Fryštát, once a smaller town, inherited the functions of the lost Karviná: its classical square, the Larisch-Mönnich Palace and the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Memory of a Vanished City

Today’s Karviná is a modern industrial city, yet the memory of the ‘lost Karviná’ still endures.
Old photographs, memoirs and the few remaining traces – the leaning church, fragments of walls, wayside shrines and crosses – bear silent witness to a world that no longer exists.

It was in that world that Dr Wacław Olszak lived and worked: a physician of miners and a mayor who believed that, even in a divided land, one could build a community grounded in solidarity and mutual respect.

Modern Karviná is, in truth, two cities: one visible, the other buried beneath the ground and in collective memory.
In that memory – as in the leaning walls of the old church – there still echoes the sound of bells and the voices of those who once made Karviná a place of work, life and hope.