Pining Away For Paradise Lost

Proposal to abolish Czech totalitarian regimes institute at court

Brno- The Czech Constitutional Court (US) has received a proposal to abrogate the law on the basis of which the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has been established, CTK has learnt.

The proposal to abolish the state-established facility that is to research into Nazism and communism in Czech history was signed by 57 opposition deputies from the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM).

They say the institute could politically influence the interpretation of history.

By all means, let us not forget about the influences that stem from the political interpretation of history.

They also object to labelling the whole period of communist rule as totalitarian, it ensues from the proposal.It is difficult to say when the Constitutional Court will rule on the proposal.

The left-wing deputies fear that people will consider the results of the research conducted by a state-established institution as the "official" and sole possible interpretation of history.

"This will factually restrict the constitution-guaranteed freedom of scientific research," the proposal says.

This is beginning to smell of George Soros.

The deputies also object to what they call ideological terminology.

"The law authoritatively describes the section of Czechoslovak history between February 25, 1948 [when Communists seized power in then Czechoslovakia] and December 29, 1989 [end of communist regime in Czechoslovakia] as a period of communist totalitarian power. It does not consider the fact that the period was changeable from the point of view of ways of exercise of state power and was not compact in this respect," the deputies write.

They write that the 1950s saw a real totalitarian regime while in the 1960s the regime was gradually democratised, and they say that it did not fully return to the repressive practices from the times of the cult of personality in the 1950s even after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.

That's why so many Czech ex-pats returned home; overwhelming the borders, just to see the 5000-7000 Soviet tanks that were now in the Czech Lands to guarantee their freedom.

"This state also carried out a number of measures that were generally positive for society, particularly in the social sphere," the deputies write.

They use as "a partial example the deepening of the practical equalisation of women in political, economic and family life, as well the abandoning of the practice of making differences between children according to their origin."

The left-wing deputies recommend to the Constitutional Court to abrogate the law as a whole, or to at least delete the words "totalitarian" from a number of passages of the law.

Nácek a komunista svině would work.

The right justified the establishment of the institute by an effort to concentrate and process the written documents of all security forces of the communist regime.

It said the processing of data and making them available should contribute to the comprehension of the communist regime and at the same time to the prevention of a biased interpretation of history.

The institute's activities will be supervised by a council that has elected historian Pavel Zacek as the institute's first head. He will formally assume his post on January 1.

David Irving was unavailable for comment.

Via ČTK

Keeping History Alive

Stránský honors comrades in arms
Former prisoner keeps friends' memories alive at communist-era grave

It has been 48 years since someone last heaved an anonymous body into one of the 5-by-2-meter ditches on the outskirts of the Dáblice cemetery, but the convex partitions between the mass graves still remain visible.

Walled off from the rest of the graveyard by a row of rosebushes and hedges, a neat grid of headstones now covers the mossy patch of earth that once served as a dumping ground for 207 tortured and executed political prisoners.

On the 18-year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, 84-year-old Stanislav Stránský saunters through the abandoned burial ground, picking up overturned flowerpots and adjusting the flickering candles near the headstones.

“When I first came here in 1989, this place was a bush,” he says, motioning to the dense thicket behind the cemetery wall. “There was nothing here, just holes in the ground where our friends were deplorably deposited.”

Stránský himself is no stranger to the Orwellian treachery of Stalinist-era prisons. For 10 years, he braved brutal beatings, interrogations and backbreaking work in forced labor camps. To this day, he calls himself a MUKL, an acronym for “man designated for liquidation” and a term political prisoners in the 1950s used to describe themselves.

Since 1990, he has been chairman of the Association of Former Political Prisoners (SBPV) and the chief force behind the rehabilitation of the Dáblice burial ground for the victims of the 1950s Czechoslovak communist regime.

[...]

A narrow path separates the mass graves from another haunting memorial: The meadow here is also dotted with flower pots, and the dates of birth and death on the minute, white headstones are often just days apart. They mark the graves of 37 children born in 1950s communist prisons.

“Not all of these children are the babies of political prisoners, but that doesn’t matter,” Stránský says. “We took them under our wing because they were born behind bars — in captivity.”

Preserving the past

Although mass graves first came to his attention nearly 40 years ago, Stránský wasn’t able to begin mending the burying ground until after the fall of communism.

“We had to tear through the brambles to get here,” he says. “Some of the victims’ relatives that heard about this place had placed makeshift crosses from rags and twigs in the ground.”

Even after the Iron Curtain fell, Stránský struggled to obtain the permits and funds to rehabilitate the area.
“After 1989, the government was still full of Bolsheviks, so I went through a lot of trouble to prove to public officials that doing this made sense — that it was something worth preserving for future generations,” he says. “The [cemetery keeper] wanted to bulldoze the place.”

[...]

Extraordinary circumstances

Stránský describes himself as an ordinary person.

“I’ve always done simple, honest work to make a living, which is the greatest capital a person can have,” he says.

Born in Bratislava and “christened by the Morava River,” he was forced to move to Prague with his Czech father in 1938, when a fear of Hitler caused Slovaks to distance themselves from their “Czech brothers.”

They certainly did 'distance' themselves.

At 15, Stránský attended an International Students’ Day protest against Nazi occupation that left Jan Opletal, a medical student, dead.

“We were flipping over cars and trams to barricade ourselves so the Nazis couldn’t get to us,” he recalls.

During World War II, Stránský was drafted to join the Protectorate government, where he remained until 1946. That year, shortly after the end of the war, the Communist Party emblem started appearing on military uniforms. Appalled by the political affiliation of the traditionally neutral military, Stránský, a 24-year-old sergeant, told his men to tear the symbols off.

“If they would have listened to me and just taken them off, it would have been fine,” he says. “But they didn’t just take them off — they destroyed them, and that’s when the trouble started.”

Stránský was immediately stripped of his rank and court-marshaled.

“I didn’t want to leave the service, but when a superior told me I had lost all chances of promotion, I realized I had no choice,” he says.

Upon returning to civilian life, Stránský worked for the Health Ministry, participating in international campaigns to prevent infant mortality and tuberculosis.

“In 1948, the local branch of the [Communist Party] accused [United Nations aid group] UNESCO of vaccinating people against communism, and the Danes and Norwegians that were working here with us were forced to leave the country,” he says. But the damage was done — Stránský now had contacts in the West.

Lured by rumors of a foreign-based resistance movement against the communist regime, he was able to cross the border and arrange a safe passage to West Germany, where he was placed in a refugee camp. After a two-month screening process, Stránský received political refugee status and a job at the International Refugee Organization.

But his life in exile was not to last. After spending months in limbo, he began to grow restless.

“I couldn’t just sit in Germany with my arms folded,” he says. “It was time for me to act.”

Thirsty for action, Stránský chose his own mission: “My assignment was to return to Czechoslovakia, find my contact and hand him secret information. And I completed it.”

But it would be decades before he would be able to return to Germany. In what would prove to be a life-altering mistake, Stránský made a stopover at his parent’s apartment, where he was arrested by the secret police (StB).

[....]

There's more at The Prague Post.

See also Graves of Heydrich's Assassins Found.

Also at A Tangled Web

There They Go Again

Again claiming victimhood, the so-called German "expellees" - Germans living in Poland, then-Czechoslovakia and Hungary at the end of World War II - have begun another whinefest, repeating the lie that post-war expulsions were illegal acts perpetrated by vengeful governments upon innocent people.

They very conveniently overlook the inconvenient little fact that the authority for the expulsions from those countries was set forth in the Potsdam Agreement, negotiated between and agreed to by the Allied Powers during the July 17 - August 2, 1945, Potsdam Conference that was conducted in the German city of of the same name.

Memorial for Germans expellees faces delay
A memorial to the millions of Germans expelled from Eastern Europe at the close of World War II has fallen prey to inter-departmental wrangling and is likely to be delayed, the newspaper Die Welt reported Saturday.

The government has committed itself to a "visible symbol" to mark the sufferings of up to 15 million ethnic Germans expelled as the war ended, but there has been vocal opposition from Poland and the Czech Republic, from where many were forced out.

Die Welt said the Finance Ministry was unhappy with the site chosen, while the Foreign Office was insisting on the close involvement of Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Foreign Office is reported to be against using the term "German victims."

Speaking in Warsaw on Saturday, newly-elected Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk expressed his concerns about German moves with regard to the "expellees" as they are known in Germany.

Tusk's predecessor, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was outspoken in his opposition to a memorial.

The idea of a memorial has been strongly pushed in Germany by Erika Steinbach, president of the Federation of Expellees (BdV) and a member of parliament for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).

Merkel herself backed a memorial when speaking at the BdV's 50th anniversary celebrations last month.

In October a German government spokesman said agreement on a memorial was close, with the cabinet deciding on a concept before the end of this year.

German media reports said the memorial would take the form of a documentation centre under the auspices of the German Historical Museum.

In his address, Tusk drew attention to the activities of the Prussian Trust, which is seeking to reclaim property Germans lost at the end of the war, saying he shared the "special concern" about the claims.

His government would take a "very hard" stance, he added.

The activities of the Prussian Trust and of Steinbach's BdV "cast a shadow" on Polish-German relations, said the new prime minister, who has committed himself to improving relations with Germany following difficult period.

The German government has itself rejected the claims made by the Prussian Trust.

Many Eastern Europeans fear an attempt to "rewrite history" by casting the Germans as victims rather than aggressors in the war, and Steinbach is regarded with extreme suspicion in Poland in particular.

Some Poles think of Frau Steinbach in this manner.

According to German estimates, some 15 million German speakers were expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe, with 8 million ending up in West Germany and 4 million in the formerly communist East Germany.

Up to 2 million are thought to have died as a result of the expulsions.

Memo to the Whiners
There was a war.

It was a very big war.

Your folks started it.

The Allies finished it.

You're still losers.

Deal with it.

Back on August 22

Also at A Tangled Web

Seething, Gnashing Of Teeth

The Soviet Union Russians just can't understand why they're not loved by central and eastern Europeans.

Seeing red
The Foreign Affairs Ministry is rushing to smooth tensions after controversy erupted over a Soviet war memorial in south Moravia that's pitted the Russian consulate against a local politician.

The monument, beside a church in the Královo Pole district of Brno, commemorates 326 Red Army soldiers who died liberating the city from Nazi forces in 1945. Above the interred remains of the dead sits a stone obelisk, erected in 1946, that’s crowned with a five-pointed star and embossed at the base with a hammer and sickle. A message in Russian commemorates the unidentified dead.

But during the night June 25, the hammer and sickle disappeared, and none other than Královo Pole’s deputy mayor has claimed responsibility. Two days before the memorial was to be officially unveiled after months of renovations, René Pelán called a stonemason for help. Pelán was so opposed to the hammer and sickle that he himself took power tools to the stone to help grind it off.

“The hammer and sickle are communist symbols, and communism is connected with dictatorship and a reign of terror,” said Pelán, who called the memorial “a monster.” As for the star, “I have nothing against [it],” he said. “That’s the official symbol of the Red Army.”

At the unveiling June 27, police had to be called to detain protesters who showed up to support Pelán’s move, the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reported. Alexei Kolmakov, attaché at Brno’s Russian consulate, arrived to observe the fracas.

Russian consular officials refused to comment, but in a June 28 press release called Pélan’s actions “a deliberate disgracing” of the Red Army victims and an attempt to “rewrite history.”

Such as the liberation of Plzeň?

In late May, when Pelán proposed replacing the monument with a general one to all World War II victims, the consulate released a statement saying they would consider any steps to remove the memorial as “hostile.”

Looks like Královo Pole’s deputy mayor has called their bluff.

And his actions told the Soviets Russians to STFU, already.

It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again

And how prophetic Yogi's famous pronouncement remains.

Czechoslovakia's biggest disinformation ops now on web

Ask any Czech who is old enough to remember the Communist years what comes to mind when they hear the name Cerne Jezero, or the Black Lake. They will tell you that it is in Bohemia's Sumava region and the place where several chests containing Nazi secret police documents were found. The fact that the chests were actually placed there by Czechoslovakia's own secret police, the StB, only came to light after one of their agents defected and wrote a book about the operation. But now, the original StB documents with detailed information about the plan can be found on the web.

Back in 1964, four chests believed to contain secret Nazi intelligence documents were found at the bottom of the Black Lake. They were retrieved by a group of divers during the making of a Czechoslovak TV documentary. Since it was believed that the Nazis had sunk a number of chests with stolen treasure and secret documents in the lake, the Czechoslovak intelligence was called to the scene. The chests were taken to Prague and the interior minister at the time proudly declared that a list of all Gestapo collaborators was amongst other secret documents in the chest.

At the time, nobody even suspected that the chests had been put there just a few weeks earlier - naturally not by the Nazis but by Czechoslovakia's own intelligence service. Together with the KGB, they had been in possession of documents on Nazi collaborators since the end of the war but were waiting for an opportunity to make them useful. The time was ripe in the 1960s as the documents proved that West Germany's secret service was still using a network of agents that also served the Nazis and that influential government officials had already served under Adolf Hitler. Interior ministry historian Petr Cajthaml: "It was the Cold War and the goal was to re-awaken interest and discredit West German politicians. Another goal was to have the statute of limitations for war criminals, which would have expired in 1965, extended. Following the extensive media coverage, the countries that suffered during WWII demanded that the statute be prolonged. Germany eventually extended it and then agreed that there be no limited time in which their war criminals could be tried."

The divers that retrieved the chests were actually led to them by a man named Ladislav Bittman, who in reality was an StB agent specialising in misinformation campaigns. To make the chests look authentic, the corrosion process was studied carefully so that the rust on the metal parts looked like the chests had been in the water for twenty years.

"The chests that were put there contained normal white paper as the real documents that were later shown at the press conference got to Czechoslovakia from the Soviet Union weeks after the chests were retrieved. The first time that the disinformation campaign came to light was in 1972. Ladislav Bittman, who himself ran the operation emigrated in 1968 and made the operation public a few years later in a book called 'The Deception Game' that came out in the United States."

Details of the operation can now be found on the internet. The Czech civilian intelligence has posted the original StB files on the operation dubbed "Neptune" on its website.

Dan Blather would be proud.

audio