Brothers Mašín

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The brothers Ctirad and Josef Mašín (1950) The brothers Ctirad and Josef Mašín (1950)
The brothers Ctirad and Josef Mašín (1950)

The brothers Ctirad Mašín (born August 11, 1930 in Prague ; † August 13, 2011 in Cleveland , Ohio ; Ray Masin in the USA ) and Josef Mašín jun. (Born March 8, 1932 in Prague; Joe Masin in the USA ) were sons of the Czechoslovak officer Josef Mašín and members of an anti-communist resistance group.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the brothers and some like-minded people committed several attacks and acts of sabotage against the Stalinist regime of the Communist Party under Klement Gottwald . Their spectacular "Wild West Escape" in the autumn of 1953 finally caused an international sensation during the Cold War . Despite a contingent of thousands of People's Police and Soviet soldiers , the Mašín group shot their way through the Iron Curtain to West Berlin, freeing them killed four people's police officers.

In the Czech Republic there is still controversial debate as to whether the acts of the Mašín brothers should be seen as heroic partisan struggle or as criminal acts. After the turn of the millennium, the first lower awards were given by the government.

Preparations for the underground struggle

The father, Colonel Josef Mašín sen.

Ctirad and Josef Mašín's parents were Zdena geb. Nováková and Josef Mašín , who was active in the resistance groups ON , ÚVOD and especially Tři králové (Three Kings) during the German occupation in World War II and was executed. Josef Mašín senior was posthumously promoted to major general, and his teenage sons received medals of bravery.

The takeover by the communists in February 1948 made a national hero because of their sons from bourgeois origin " class enemies ". The official propaganda that still has an impact today later declared this “narcissistic insult” at the start of the “private war” of the Mašín brothers against the Czechoslovak state. As members of the former “ruling class”, the brothers experienced the Stalinist terror of the 1950s up close: many of those who disappeared overnight without a trace or were sentenced to death in show trials were friends or acquaintances of the Mašín family. For example, Milada Horáková (1901–1950), a Czechoslovak politician and women's rights activist and one of the regime’s first victims of justice, was a close friend of her mother (see also: Rudolf Slansky ).

In his last letter, found in his cell after his death, Father Mašín called on his sons to always fight for the freedom of their fatherland. The "Russians" - once allies in the fight against the Nazis - were now in their eyes the occupiers who had to be driven out. Many people in Eastern Europe thought similarly: they hoped for the American invasion, which radio stations like Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE) constantly announced. Young men from these countries fled to the West to join a specially established special unit of the United States Army . Its members should be deployed as underground fighters in their home countries in the event of war. The Mašíns also wanted to go this way. But first they wanted to “teach the communists to fear” at home.

With some friends they formed a loose action group. The group's mentor was Ctibor Novák, brother of her mother Zdena and a former secret service officer. Only he and the Mašíns knew the identity of all members. Novák later claimed in court that he had only joined the group in order to have a moderating effect on his hot-tempered nephews and to deter them from dangerous actions. In reality, however, he was a passionate promoter of the underground struggle.

Actions

In 1951 the group raided two police stations in order to steal weapons and ammunition. A police officer was killed on both occasions. Other witnesses to the raids were stunned with chloroform but left alive. One of these actions took place in the Kersko Forest near Hradištko u Sadské . On September 12, 1951, Ctirad Mašín and Milan Paumer tied up the taxi owner in the forest who had driven them after their attack on the police station in Chlumec nad Cidlinou . On September 28, the brothers Mašín and Paumer seized an ambulance at the junction of the road to Kersko from the 611 near Velenka and tied the paramedics in the forest. They then raided the police station in Čelákovice with the stolen ambulance .

It was more by chance that Novák and the Mašíns were arrested shortly afterwards by the Státní bezpečnost (StB) secret police and subjected to "intensified interrogation methods" for weeks. Ctirad Mašín had exchanged ideas with a distant acquaintance about escape routes. He was then arrested as an alleged CIC agent and told everything he knew during interrogation. Mašin was then sentenced to forced labor in a uranium mine near Jáchymov .

While Ctirad Mašín was imprisoned, the others attacked a wage money transport in August 1952 and looted 846,000 kroner . One of the transport attendants was shot by Josef Mašín.

After his release, Ctirad Mašín had the idea of blowing up a freight train with uranium for the Soviet Union or the train of President Gottwald . For this purpose, the group stole four boxes of 25 kilograms of explosives from a quarry, but they were no longer used. The last spectacular action was “The Night of Big Fires” in early September 1953: Václav Švéda and Ctirad Mašín rode their bikes through some villages in Moravia and hid incendiary devices with improvised time fuses in straw piles everywhere. The whole thing was a protest against the collectivization of agriculture. Even straw was a scarce commodity back then. The action was not only intended to spread fear and terror, but was an attack on the economic basis of the collective farms. When the stacks were on fire, some of the startled residents spotted the two strangers. Two men followed her on bicycles. When the chain fell off Mašín's bike, he opened fire on his pursuers. One was uninjured, the other was seriously injured by hits in the lungs and eye.

Mašín supporters attach importance to the fact that the last two victims were members of the communist people's militia Lidové milice - the counterpart to the East German fighting groups of the working class . They are therefore not regarded as civilians, but as legitimate targets in partisan struggle.

Escape and search

Uckro station
Václav Švéda
Ctibor Novák

On the night of October 3 to 4, 1953, Zbyněk Janata, Václav Švéda, Milan Paumer and the Mašín brothers crossed the border with the GDR near Deutschkatharinenberg and tried to make their way to West Berlin . The attempt to hijack a car brought the People's Police on the trail of the "five suspicious foreigners". During a nightly identity check at the Uckro train station near Luckau , the situation then escalated: a policeman, Herrmann Grummini, was shot and two others seriously injured. This incident triggered the Uckro manhunt , which, after a few further failures, developed into the largest manhunt in the history of the German People's Police . Thousands of police officers were on duty, and units of the barracked People's Police - the forerunner of the NVA - and units of the Soviet Army were ordered to reinforce the area.

The exact number of pursuers is not clear. The figure of 20,000 later given by the Mašins and the Western press is based on information from People's Police, who in turn used the manhunt to escape. Because of the strict secrecy within the East German police, it can only be an estimate. The internal final report of the large manhunt only spoke of 5,000 police officers, but did not provide any information on the number of Stasi men, Soviet soldiers and so-called helpers deployed.

The restrictive internal information policy led to the creation of legends about the unbelievable accuracy and close combat ability of the Czechs. The z. Policemen, some of whom were inexperienced, literally shot at “everything that was moving” and repeatedly took colleagues or uninvolved civilians under fire. Three people's police officers killed by friendly fire are known. Three more were shot by the Czechs. Only Zbyněk Janata and Václav Švéda were included. She and Ctibor Novák were later sentenced to death and executed in Czechoslovakia.

Secret supporters from the population and several unbelievable coincidences helped the Mašín brothers and Milan Paumer to reach the US sector of Berlin on November 2, after 31 days of escape . Paumer had suffered two serious gunshot wounds.

The Uckro manhunt did not fit the GDR leadership's image that they wanted to provide of themselves. That is why the major action was not exploited for propaganda purposes, but hushed up. But not only at the Moscow Police College it later served as a prime example of failed police tactics, it was also the subject of internal training in the GDR, especially in the MfS.

The two brothers, their three friends, the deeds in Czechoslovakia and the escape of the five through the GDR are still controversial today.

The deployed people's police are said to have been completely in the dark about the wanted persons and their willingness to shoot. On the other hand, the huge number of hunting and blocking troops were heavily armed and, as the sources show, only too often fired at blind suspicion. It was searched for "gang-like" police murderers and CIA agents and thus for public enemies.

After the escape

The three refugees emigrated to the USA, where they enlisted in the US Army for five years in the hope of soon being deployed in Czechoslovakia. When the West did not intervene in the Hungarian uprising in 1956 , they lost the illusion of the “great war against communism”.

After their military service ended, the two brothers became entrepreneurs. Milan Paumer worked as a taxi driver in Florida. Josef Mašín moved to Cologne, Germany, in the 1960s. When the Czechoslovak secret service found out about it, he tried several times to kidnap or murder Mašín. Josef Mašín later went back to California.

In 1995 a Czech court of appeal declared the actions of the Mašín group to be statute barred. Those affected were dissatisfied with this verdict: they are demanding an acquittal and recognition as resistance fighters. They have never expressed regrets for the uniformed and civilian victims, three dead in Czechoslovakia, four dead and two injured in the GDR, and they consider disapproval of their actions to be an "aftermath of communist propaganda".

Milan Paumer had been living in his old home again since 2001. On July 22, 2010, at the age of 79, he died of a serious illness in Prague. The Mašín brothers never set foot on Czech soil again and they never came to Paumer's funeral - on the grounds that not much has changed in the Czech Republic since the end of communism.

Ctirad and Josef's mother Zdena Mašínová was arrested as a result of the actions of their sons and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment; she died in prison on June 12, 1956.

Books, films and documentaries

In many Czech agitprop works, the Mašíns had to face the class enemy from then on. So z. B. in an episode of the series The 30 Cases of Major Zeman . In the 1970s, a magazine even published Josef Mašín's German address. That was supposed to explain to an old friend who was now traveling on behalf of the Czechoslovak State Security Service that he knew the address.

In 1985, a collection of authentic criminal cases was published under the title Mrtví nemluví (“The Dead Don't Talk”), which also devoted a chapter to the Mašín brothers. This was published in the spring of 1989 as a booklet novel The Masins do not give up (series: The new adventure ) in the GDR and was the only exception to the widespread silence of the "Großfahndung Uckro" and its history.

The Mašíns themselves had their say in a series of interviews on the Czech program of Radio Free Europe in the 1980s and in the book Jenom ne strach (“Just don't be afraid”). The interviewer and author of the book was the writer Ota Rambousek (1923-2010), who also lived in exile in America. Rambousek had been an agent for the American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). After his exposure, he was sentenced to death, but later pardoned to life imprisonment. In prison he had heard of the story of the Mašín brothers: at the time it was known as a kind of heroic legend among the prisoners. In 1968 he was released and went to America. Later he got to know the Mašíns personally and decided to write their story. But he couldn't find a publisher. Mašín supporters assure that Václav Havel - a former classmate of the Mašíns at the grammar school in Poděbrady and who has been warmly hostile to them since those days - personally prevented the book from being published in the Czech exile publishing house 68 Publishers . The book was finally published in Prague in 1990.

The history of the manhunt and the reasons for its failure were only dealt with by Wolfgang Mittmann after the fall of the Berlin Wall . Mittmann, 34 years in the ranks of the People's Police, devoted himself to the description of spectacular and mysterious criminal cases in the GDR after retiring from his career. The state security authorities only had internal information about the problematic, gigantic and amateurish "Uckro manhunt". The rumor mill about the "Czech War" was all the more seething. Mittmann interviewed German witnesses of the escape and search, including the wounded police officers, and was the first to inspect the files of the People's Police and State Security . He corrected some information in Rambousek's book. Mittmann viewed the Mašíns as violent criminals and was astonished that Rambousek praised their actions as a “legitimate fight against communism”.

In 2004 the Czech-American writer Jan Novák published the novel Zatím dobrý (“So Far, So Good”), which is based on the story of the Mašín family. Although Novák wrote the book in English, there is only one Czech edition so far.

Josef Mašín's daughter Barbara also researched the history of her family in German, American and Czech archives and as a result published the book Odkaz (“Testament”). The English language edition Gauntlet was published in 2006.

reception

It seems as if the Mašín brothers play a bigger role for the Czech public today than they did in their active days: They force it to debate the legitimacy of the armed anti-communist resistance. For some they are criminals and murderers, for others they are heroes and the only victims of Stalinism who were never rehabilitated. Annually submitted applications to award them the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Order have always been rejected. Czech politicians mostly avoid taking a clear position on the Mašíns in public.

The Canadian Association of Exiled Czechs and Slovaks presented the brothers and Milan Paumer with the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Prize in 2005. In the same year five Czech Mašín supporters made a memorial march along the escape route. They demanded a state award for the brothers as a proxy for recognition of the "armed resistance".

On February 28, 2008, the conservative Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek awarded the Mašín brothers the newly created medal of the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic at the Czech embassy in Washington during a visit to the USA . Milan Paumer received the medal on March 4th. Topolánek asked the parliament to give the brothers an award as well. In 2011, Defense Minister Alexandr Vondra awarded the brothers a military award ( Vyznamenání Zlaté lípy ) at the Ctirad Mašín funeral in Cleveland .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Silja Schultheis: “There is no clear attitude towards the communist era” - publicist Hvížizala on the discussion about the Mašín brothers. on Radio Prague on August 12, 2010, accessed on August 16, 2010.
  2. ↑ MAŠÍN Josef , detailed curriculum vitae in: Vojenské osobnosti československého odboje 1939–1945 , publication of the Historical Military Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic, AVIS, Prague 2005, p. 191, online (archived) at: vojenskaakademiehranice.ic.cz / ...
  3. ↑ See Ross Hedvicek: "Havel zakázal Škvoreckému vydat knihu o Mašínech"
  4. ↑ s. Hans Girod : The police murder of Gera - and other spectacular violent crimes from the GDR , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3360019455 , p. 22f
  5. ↑ Verejnosť si činů Mašínů začne vážit, Vondra Mini - Novinky.cz August 24, 2011

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