Remembering The Past; Honoring Its Victims

Overcoming history
Marking the 60th anniversary of the communist coup
On Feb. 25, the Czech Republic commemorated the anniversary of the coup that brought the communists to power.

For many at the time of the 1948 takeover, the event represented a new beginning and a bright future. Throughout the communists’ subsequent rule from 1948 to 1989, the anniversary was revered as a glorious day, when people took justice into their own hands and threw off the shackles of capitalism.

Of course, it can now be said that the communist takeover plunged the country into decades of darkness and terror.

This year’s memorial services over the weekend of Feb. 23 and 24 and into Monday were of a somber tone, reminding participants of the pro-democratic student marches that took place during the 1948 government crisis and the thousands of people persecuted, killed or unjustly sentenced during the following 41 years.

One service Monday morning took place on the spot near Prague Castle where a peaceful student march protesting the communists was stopped and attacked by police Feb. 25, 1948. Those young demonstrators were remembered by today’s politicians as well as surviving witnesses. Some 100 people gathered to listen to the service.

“We should remember those who were capable of thinking for themselves and did not exchange the legacy of president founder Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk for cheap Stalinist propaganda,” Senate Chairman Premysl Sobotka said in an address to the crowd. “The events that took place here should serve as a memento to the fragility of freedom and democracy.”

Zdenek Bohác, chairman of the Prague Academic Club 48, personally took part in the marches, and sadly observed, “There are not very many young people here today. Today’s students are not interested in politics as much as we used to be. That is a great source of personal grief for me. Some traditions should not be forgotten.”

Step by step

The events of February 1948 were just the end of a process that started years earlier. Even before the end of World War II, the Communist Party was preparing a National Front of parties that would participate in elections after the war.

In the 1946 elections, communists secured 40 percent of the seats in the temporary Parliament and started to slowly infiltrate other parties within the National Front as well as the police and army. By the beginning of 1948, their control was almost complete, and communist ministers led by Prime Minister Klement Gottwald decided to move quickly in order to ensure complete control by the upcoming election that May.

However, the final changes in police command sparked a government crisis, precipitating the resignation of 12 noncommunist ministers, who expected President Edvard Beneš to respond by forming a caretaker government that would lead the country to the May elections. But the communists were prepared for such resistance, and their loyal supporters sparked a wave of protest against “reactionary forces trying to undermine the new people’s republic.” The Soviet Union also quickly promised armed help to Czechoslovak communists.

When noncommunist party leaders saw where things were headed, most of them emigrated, leaving Beneš to stand alone against the full might of communist propaganda and military force.

Historic protests

University students organized only a few marches to support the president, one of which took place Monday, Feb. 23. Despite attempts by the police to disperse it, the students were joined by many others, forming a crowd of several thousand people that reached Prague Castle late that evening. A five-member delegation of marchers was allowed to see the president. Among them was young national socialist MP Josef Lesák. Now the last surviving member of that pre-communist Parliament, Lesák shared his memories of that meeting with The Prague Post.

“We were brought in to see Beneš around 10 p.m. He looked very sick and tired,” he said. “We saluted his accomplishments in the fight for an independent Czechoslovakia during both world wars. We also told him that we hoped that he would preserve freedom and democracy even in these difficult times.”

Beneš responded by promising the students he would do everything in his power to ensure the continuation of the state as envisaged by the first president and his close associate, Masaryk. However, his chancellor warned the students not to get their hopes up, as events were simply moving too quickly by then.

The communists were determined not to let another march occur. When, on Wednesday, Feb. 25, the students again attempted to reach the castle, they were brutally stopped by special police forces. Lesák was among them.

“Our only weapon was the national anthem. Whenever the police advanced, we sang it and they had to stop and salute,” he said. “They soon caught on and attacked despite our singing. Blood was flowing everywhere. The boys tried to protect the girls from gun butts and kicks, but to no avail. Most of the police were young kids just like us, and one of them got scared and shot a fellow student, crippling him for the rest of his life. Then the peaceful demonstration broke up, because everyone was too scared.”

Unbeknown to them, Beneš, ever the pacifist, had already given in to communist demands fearing a civil war and armed intervention by the Soviet Union. Even as police were attacking the student protestors, Prime Minister Gottwald was addressing a crowd on Wenceslas Square, announcing that Beneš had accepted all his proposals.

Every step of the government crisis leading to the communist victory was taken in accordance with the Constitution. It just happened that the result meant the end of democratic rule for the next 41 years and the country’s descent into a dark period. Most of the democratic activists of February 1948 who didn’t manage to flee abroad were jailed or sentenced to years of hard labor. Even 60 years later, their fight for democracy is not forgotten.

Today, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia does not celebrate “Victorious February” as it used to, says party vice chairman Jirí Dolejš. Instead, the party views the takeover as an important and inevitable historical development based fully on democratic elections that happened in accordance with the Constitution.

“After World War II, people wanted a change, and they saw a chance in socialism,” he said. “The fact that Soviet influence became so important was an unfortunate accident that led to serious crimes, but we have already renounced these mistakes.”

Soviet influence was not an unfortunate accident, kretén, and you damn well know it.

Via The Prague Post

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

Memo To The Kooky Kult of Koslam

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Dubya gets rock star treatment while he was in New Europe, now this.

US Unveils Communism Victims Memorial Co-funded by Česke Republika

The Czech government and leading political parties have financially contributed to the memorial to victims of the communism that was unveiled in Washington in the presence of U.S. President George W. Bush Tuesday.

The aim of the memorial is to prevent the world's communist regimes from being forgotten,

And just as important

to honour those putting up resistance to such regimes, and to inform the next generations about the threat of tyranny.

The Czech government contributed 150,000 crowns to the project and a half of the same sum was also provided by the Czech senior opposition Social Democrats (CSSD) and the junior ruling Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) together.

Interesting how the Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy (Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia [KSČM]) isn't on the donor list. Fancy that!

Bush said at the unveiling ceremony that he accepts the memorial with pride on behalf of the people of America.

He said it is necessary to point to the crimes of the despotic regimes for the sake of the dead and also to prevent similar horrors from repeating.

Historians estimate the number of victims of communism at more than 100 million.

Undoubtedly, Truthers are in a frenzy preparing Kosling Conspiracy Theory No.___.

Reasonable speculation would be that one theory will prove that this monument is really a secret tribute to the unseen, but ever present, forces of the Bushchimphitler-Pajamashadeen-Joooish Conspiracy; that use of the 100 million figure was ordered by eeeevil Cheney; and that there was no such thing as communism.