Re: The Lost World of Communism « Reply #1 on Aug 18, 2012, 4:54pm »
Milada Horáková
Dr. Milada Horáková (25 December 1901, Prague – 27 June 1950) was a Czech politician executed by Communists on charges of conspiracy and treason.
Biography
She was born as Milada Králová in Prague and then studied law at the Charles University. She graduated in 1926 and then worked at the Prague City Council. In the same year she graduated, she entered the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, which despite the misleading name was a strong opponent of the Nazis. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, she joined the underground resistance movement, but was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940. She was initially sentenced to death, but later her punishment was reduced to life imprisonment and Horáková was sent to the concentration camp Terezín and then to various prisons in Germany. After the liberation in May 1945, she returned to Prague, rejoining her party. She was elected a Member of Parliament, where she remained until the Communist coup in February 1948, when she resigned. Even though she was urged by her friends to leave Czechoslovakia, she remained in the country and was still politically active. On 27 September 1949 she was arrested and eventually accused of being the leader of a supposed plot to overthrow the Communist regime. The StB, the Czechoslovak secret police infamous for brutal interrogation methods, tried to break the group of the alleged plotters and forced them to confess to treason and conspiracy using both physical and psychological torture.
Milada Horakova defending herself at trial.
The trial of her and her twelve colleagues began on 31 May 1950. It was intended to be a show trial like those of the Soviet Great Purges in the 1930s, broadcast on the radio and even supervised by Soviet advisors. The trial had a script which everyone involved was supposed to follow, but on several occasions both prosecutor Ludmila Brožová-Polednová and the defendant managed to state their true feelings. Horáková stood firm and defended herself and her ideals even though she knew that such fight could only worsen her conditions and the final result. The State's prosecutor was Dr. Josef Urválek. She was sentenced to death along with three of her co-defendants on 8 June 1950. Many famous people, notably Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt, petitioned for her life, but in spite of this the sentence was confirmed and she was hanged in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950. She was 48 years old. In 2005 the uncensored original recording of the trial was found by the filmmaker Martin Vadas.
Other defendants
Jan Buchal (1913–1950), State Security officer (executed) Vojtěch Dundr (1879–1957), former Secretary of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party (15 years) Dr. Jiří Hejda (1895–1985), former factory owner (life imprisonment) Dr. Bedřich Hostička (1914–1996), secretary of the Czechoslovak People's Party (28 years) Záviš Kalandra (1902–1950), journalist (executed) Antonie Kleinerová (1901–1996), former Member of Parliament for the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (life imprisonment) Dr. Jiří Křížek (1895–1970), lawyer (22 years) Dr. Josef Nestával (1900–1976), administrator (life imprisonment) Dr. Oldřich Pecl (1903–1950), former mine owner (executed) Professor Dr. Zdeněk Peška (1900–1970), university professor (25 years) František Přeučil (1907–1996), publisher (life imprisonment) Františka Zemínová (1882–1962), editor and former Member of Parliament for the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (20 years) The verdict was cancelled in June 1968 during the Prague Spring, but because of the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia that followed, Horáková's reputation was not fully rehabilitated until after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. 27 June, the day of her execution, was declared "Commemoration day of the victims of the Communist regime" in the Czech Republic as of the year 2004. A major thoroughfare in Prague 6 was renamed in her honor in 1990. On 11 September 2008, Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, the prosecutor in the Horáková trial, was sentenced to 6 years in prison, 58 years after her crime, at the age of 87.
Joined: Nov 2005 Gender: Female Posts: 15,992 Location: Idaho
Re: The Lost World of Communism « Reply #3 on Aug 18, 2012, 9:43pm »
Milada Horakova on the photo when she was defending herself looks like 80 years old lady. She had to be just 48! I think that years in concentration camp, the stress of imprisonment and imminent death (maybe torture and starvation also) made her to look so sick and old. Very sad story, especially since she was condemned by two autocratic regimes.
Jaga PolishSite Nothing is black and white. One country's terrorist is another country freedom fighter. Spy is either a hero or a traitor - depending where.
Re: The Lost World of Communism « Reply #4 on Aug 19, 2012, 2:39am »
Jaga,
I agree with you, she looks a little bit like my Dutch grandma when she was in her eightees. There is a simularity with Poland, where also some Poles suffered under the same two totalitarian, autocratic regimes, Nazism and Stalinism. I think about the Witold Pilecki case.
Camp photo of Auschwitz prisoner Witold Pilecki in 1941
Photos of Pilecki from Mokotów prison (Warsaw) (1947) during the Stalinist political trial against him
History of Czechoslovakia (1948–1989)
From the Communist coup d'état in February 1948 to the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Czechoslovakia was ruled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (czech: Komunistická strana Československa, KSČ). The country belonged to the Eastern Bloc and was a member of the Warsaw Pact and of Comecon. During the Communist regime, thousands of Czechoslovaks faced political persecution for various offences, such as trying to escape across the Iron Curtain. The 1993 Act on Lawlessness of the Communist Regime and on Resistance Against It determined that the communist regime was illegal and that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was a criminal organisation.
On February 25, 1948, President Edvard Beneš gave in to the demands of Communist Prime Minister Klement Gottwald and appointed a cabinet dominated by Communists. While it was nominally still a coalition, the "non-Communists" in the cabinet were mostly fellow travelers. This gave legal sanction to the KSČ coup, and marked the onset of undisguised Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. On 9 May, the National Assembly, purged of dissidents, passed a new constitution. It was not a completely Communist document; since a special committee prepared it in the 1945–48 period, it contained many liberal and democratic provisions. It reflected, however, the reality of Communist power through an addition that declared Czechoslovakia a people's republic — a preliminary step toward socialism and, ultimately, communism —ruled by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and also gave the Communist Party the leading role in the state. For these reasons, Beneš refused to sign the so-called Ninth-of-May Constitution. Nonetheless, elections were held on 30 May, and voters were presented with a single list from the National Front, the former governing coalition which was now a broad patriotic organisation under Communist control. Beneš resigned on 2 June, and Gottwald became president 12 days later.
Klement Gottwald in 1948
In the next few years, bureaucratic centralism under the direction of KSČ leadership was introduced. So-called "dissident" elements were purged from all levels of society, including the Catholic Church. The ideological principles of Marxism-Leninism and socialist realism pervaded cultural and intellectual life. The entire education system was submitted to state control. With the elimination of private ownership of means of production, a planned economy was introduced. Czechoslovakia became a satellite state of the Soviet Union; it was a founding member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) in 1949 and of the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The attainment of Soviet-style "socialism" became the government's avowed policy.
Stalin-Gottwald propaganda poster
Although in theory Czechoslovakia remained a multiparty state, in actuality the Communists were in complete control. Political participation became subject to KSČ approval. The KSČ also prescribed percentage representation for non-Marxist parties. The National Assembly, purged of dissidents, became a mere rubber stamp for KSČ programs. In 1953 an inner cabinet of the National Assembly, the Presidium, was created. Composed of KSČ leaders, the Presidium served to convey party policies through government channels. Regional, district, and local committees were subordinated to the Ministry of Interior. Slovak autonomy was constrained; the KSS was reunited with the KSČ but retained its own identity. Gottwald died in 1953. He was succeeded by Antonín Zápotocký as president and by Antonín Novotný as head of the KSČ. Novotný became president in 1957 when Zápotocký died.
Czechoslovakian president Antonín Zápotocký
Antonín Novotný as head of the KSČ and Czechoslowakian president after Antonín Zápotocký's death
Czechoslovak interests were subordinated to the interests of the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin became particularly concerned about controlling and integrating the socialist bloc in the wake of Tito's challenge to his authority. Stalin's paranoia resulted in a campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" which culminated in the conspiracy theory of the alleged Doctors' plot. In Czechoslovakia, the Stalinists also accused their opponents of "conspiracy against the people's democratic order" and "high treason" in order to oust them from positions of power. Many Communists with an "international" background, i.e., those with a wartime connection with the West, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Jews, and Slovak "bourgeois nationalists", were arrested and executed in show trials (e.g., Heliodor Píka, Milada Horáková).
Czechoslovakian general Heliodor Píka (1897 - 1949) was one of the victims of the Stalinist terror
Most spectacular was the Slánský trial against KSČ first secretary Rudolf Slánský and thirteen other prominent Communist personalities in November and December 1952. Slánský and ten other defendants were executed, while three were sentenced to life imprisonment. The KSČ rank-and-file membership, approximately 2.5 million in March 1948, began to be subjected to careful scrutiny. By 1960KSČ membership had been reduced to 14 million..
Re: The Lost World of Communism « Reply #5 on Aug 19, 2012, 3:21am »
Heliodor Píka
General Heliodor Píka (July 3, 1897 – June 21, 1949) was a Czechoslovak army officer who was executed by his country's Communist regime after a show trial.
Early life
Heliodor Píka was born in a village of Štítina (Czechia or Bohemia, in the Moravian–Silesian Region), near Opava, then Austria-Hungary. During World War I, Píka served as a Czechoslovak legionnaire in the Russian theatres. He was captured at Berestechko on October 5, 1916 during the Russian campaign but by 1917 he had returned to duty as a member of the French Army and would later serve with the Czechoslovak Legions in France. By 1920, when the Legion was disbanded, Píka had risen to the rank of lieutenant. After the war, Píka studied at a French military academy, graduating in 1920.
Píka as a young legionnaire.
Service in the Czechoslovak Army
In the 1930s, Píka acted as a military attaché to Romania and Turkey. In 1938, in a bid to prevent the occupying German forces from using Czechoslovak Army matériel, he disposed of it by selling arms to the militant Haganah organization in Palestine. (Selling arms to non-state actors was forbidden by international conventions but the Czechoslovak foreign affairs department granted its approval.) He would later travel to the Balkans, from where he arranged defections of Czechoslovaks and Hungarians from German-occupied territory.
Brigadier General Heliodor Píka holds the battle flag of the Czechoslovak 2nd Airborne Brigade.
In 1941, during World War II, Píka was appointed chief of the Czechoslovak Military Mission to the Soviet Union (in Moscow). Loyal to the London-based government of exiled Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, Píka supported their democratic policies despite Soviet opposition. Píka was under constant pressure from the Soviets to betray Beneš, but despite attempts at blackmail, Píkaremained loyal throughout his tenure, which lasted until 1945. Following the war, Beneš promoted Píka to deputy chief of the general staff of the Czechoslovak Army, where he was responsible for the arms industry. He held this position until late February 1948, when he was dismissed from the Army on the orders of Rudolf Slánský, with the assistance of Army Security Intelligence Office (known as OBZ, its Czech abbreviation) chief Bedřich Reicin (the former head of Czechoslovak military intelligence, who held a grudge against Píka from the time in which they served together in the USSR).
Charges of high treason
In early May 1948, despite his status as a high-ranking military officer, Heliodor Píka was arrested without a warrant and accused of espionage and high treason. The Czechoslovak authorities forged a memorandum that purported to link General Píka to British military intelligence. (Historian Edward Crankshaw noted that the document, written in broken English, was "the most appalling and most unimaginably inefficient bit of forgery [he had] ever come across".) Despite the inadequacy of the memorandum, Píka was held through 1948 and interrogated by NKVD-trained officers of the OBZ. Reicin appointed Karel Vaš as chief investigator in the Píka case. Reicin would later, in a departure from standard practice, name Vaš the second prosecutor at Píka's trial. According to Reicin's secretary, Vaš told Reicin: "Just tell me how much you need for Píka, fifteen years or the gallows, and the indictment can be manufactured accordingly...." From January 26–29, 1949, Píka was tried in secret before the Military Senate of the State Court in Prague. (This court was specially created as an instrument of political repression in mid-1948.) Charged with high treason, damaging the interests of the Czechoslovak Republic and the Soviet Union, and undermining the ability of the state to defend itself, Píka was not allowed to present a defence, and no witnesses were called. Píka was sentenced to death. Píka unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court. Píka and his lawyer asked President Klement Gottwald (leader of the communist government) for clemency but this effort was also unsuccessful. Heliodor Píka was hanged in the yard of Bory Prison (Czech: Věznice Bory) in Plzeň around 06:00 on the morning of June 21, 1949. In a farewell letter to his family, written the night before his execution, he wrote: "I am sure that this is not a judicial error but a political murder". Offered the chance to express his last wishes as he stood at the gallows, he said: "my ultimate desire is that the nation remain united, and that everyone, without regard for their differences, work toward the unity of our people". He was the first of over 200 Czechoslovaks tried and executed for political reasons by the communist government of Czechoslovakia. His body was never found.
Aftermath
The day after Píka's conviction, Reicin, writing under a pseudonym in the Czechoslovak Army's newspaper, published a series of articles casting a politico-ideological slant upon the Píka affair. Reicin's articles were soon republished in a widely circulated pamphlet entitled "A Path That Leads to the Depths of Treason". During the Prague Spring of 1968, Píka's case was reopened at the request of Milan Píka (son of Heliodor) and the elder Píka's lawyer, and a military tribunal declared Heliodor Píka innocent of all charges. In 2001, Karel Vaš was indicted by the Czech police's State Office of Investigation on charges of having knowingly used false evidence, falsifying a confession, exceeding his powers and using psychological violence during the Píka affair. These counts would carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. In June 2001, after a trial before the Senate of the Prague City Court, the eighty-five-year-old Vaš was found guilty of introducing false documents and statements, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Both Vaš and his attorney maintained Vaš's innocence, and promised to appeal.
Honours
The Czechoslovak government conferred the Milan Rastislav Stefanik Order, 3rd class upon Píka in 1991. On September 1, 2004, Píka was awarded the highest Slovak decoration, the Order of the White Double Cross, 1st Class. (Píka was the first, and as of 2010, the only recipient of the military version of this award.) Píka earned several French medals for his military service as a Legionnaire in France during the First World War. He was also the recipient of many Soviet, American and British military decorations. In 1992, Píka was posthumously promoted to the rank of general. Following the conviction of Vaš, a June 21, 2001 ceremony was held at Czech Army headquarters in Prague to confer full military honours upon Píka.
General Heliodor Píka in 1947
I think there is such thing as justice, Karma and causality when you read about the fate of Píka's prosecutor and tormentor Bedřich Reicin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedřich_Reicin
![[Home]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/home.gif "[Home]")
![[New Topics]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/topics.png "[New Topics]")
![[Help]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/help.gif "[Help]")
![[Search]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/search.gif "[Search]")
![[Calendar]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/calendar.gif "[Calendar]")
![[Login]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/login.gif "[Login]")
![[Register]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/register.gif "[Register]")
![[Search This Thread]](http://images.proboards.com/search2.gif "[Search This Thread]")
![[Share Topic]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/share.png "[Share Topic]")
![[Print]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/print.gif "[Print]")
Author
Logged![[image]](http://czechfolks.com/plus/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Milada-Horáková-02.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.executedtoday.com/images/Milada_Horakova.jpg "[image]")
![[avatar]](http://culture.polishsite.us/forum11/JagaBrazs.jpg "[avatar]")
![[homepage]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/www_sm.gif "[homepage]")
![[image]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Roa4ndC2zKs/TVbKCUCzbLI/AAAAAAAAA20/5hTSYMZ6D_k/s1600/Photos_of_Pilecki_in_Auswaitz.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Pilecki_photo_1947.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://img.radio.cz/pictures/komunismus/gottwald1.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.gastronews.cz/pictures/zpravodajstvi/2004-11-29_stalin_gottwald1.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://homoeconomicus.cz/Politika/Prezident/Obrazky/Zapotocky02.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.praha.eu/public/97/fb/8c/12757_4_Svoboda.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.upn.gov.sk/video_web/svedkovia/foto/pika-h-01.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://img.radio.cz/pictures/lidi/slansky_rudolf1.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Heliodor_P%C3%ADka.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.szmo.cz/media/img/3/pika-4da6a17b87fa3.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.moderni-dejiny.cz/PublicFiles/UserFiles/image/Metodika/08_CSR_1948-1968/800x800_HPika.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://bi.gazeta.pl/im/b8/0d/b9/z12127672Q.jpg "[image]")