Babice case
The Babice case , named after the Babice crime scene in South Moravia , where the case began in 1951, was one of the largest constructed show trials in Czechoslovakia , which was intended to consolidate the communist regime of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia . Unlike some other known political show trials in Czechoslovakia, such as the Slansky trial , this trial was not directed against alleged dissenters in the party. The target group were supposed or actual opponents of the intended agriculturalCollectivization , but also the Catholic Church, which was very critical of the politics of the Communist Party.
backgrounds
After the Communist takeover of power in 1948, the Communist Party faced various problems - the competing parties had to be pacified, the ideological diversion within the party had to be discovered, the class enemy had to be eliminated; in addition, collectivization had to be carried out and the problems with the church resolved. As early as 1948, the party took over the Comintern line, according to which the Soviet model of collectivization of agriculture had to be implemented. As it soon became apparent, this policy met with resistance from broad sections of the population, which was particularly strong in South Moravia. Resistance groups soon formed, which often consisted of resistance fighters against the Nazi occupation of the country a few years earlier. There were also problems with the Catholic Church after Cardinal Josef Beran from Prague was interned in early 1951 and relations with the Vatican were broken. According to the intentions of the party, the situation was to be aggravated, especially in South Moravia, by infiltration of agents from the StB State Security , so that the police could intervene and break the resistance that was beginning to form; this strategy has been centrally managed by the Ministry of the Interior Department B Aa since 1950.
At the beginning of 1951 Ladislav Malý appeared in South Moravia and visited former friends, including his former classmate, chaplain Jan Bula . He posed as a representative of the US American intelligence service CIC , who should prepare the escape of the interned Cardinal Beran. On the evening of July 2, 1951, Malý and three other people attacked a meeting of the local national committee MNV in Babice in South Moravia. While the brothers Antonín and Stanislav Plichta Schmiere were standing, Ladislav Malý and Antonín Mityska broke into the building, where there was a shooting. The communist functionaries Tomáš Kuchtík, Josef Roupec and Bohumír Netolička were shot and František Bláha was injured. Some sources later claimed that the functionaries should only be alarmed, that the shooting was only due to misunderstanding. The four assassins initially fled, but were later caught, where they were shot (Ladislav Malý and Antonín Plichta) and critically injured (Stanislav Plichta). These descriptions are based on later statements by Mityska, there is no criminal documentation, and apparently no ballistic examinations were carried out and not even the murder weapon was determined. Immediately after the crime, house searches were carried out and a large wave of arrests and repression ensued.
There are many contradicting speculations about the main character Ladislav Malý and his role in the Babice case. Because the smuggling of police agents into opposition circles had actually taken place since the beginning of 1950, it was long believed that Malý was also an agent of the StB. According to other sources, he was an agent for the US intelligence service CIC . After evaluating all previously secret documents of the StB, the ÚSTR Institute came to the conclusion that Malý's action was not controlled by anyone, neither the StB nor the CIC, that it was "a tragic episode that could have happened anywhere", and only in the given situation was it a welcome trigger for an already planned strike against the peasants and the church.
The processes
Although the thrust of the trials was not aimed at direct ideological enemies in the party or abroad, but rather only unpopular strata of the population who wanted to oppose the plans of the party, the staging of the trials was not in the hands of the judiciary, but entirely by the highest levels Party organs. After the first wave of arrests subsided, the Secretariat of the Central Committee (consisting of Klement Gottwald , Antonín Zápotocký , Viliam Široký and the later executed Rudolf Slánský ) passed the seven death sentences on July 10, 1951, i.e. before the start of the first trial as well as the outsourcing of pastor Jan Bula in a later process.
The trials with the suspects arrested in the Babice case were broken down into nine major and six individual trials. This division should increase the deterrent effect. The first trial with the main defendant Antonín Mityska began on July 12, 1951 and lasted only three days. Of the 14 accused, seven were sentenced to death. In the second trial in November 1951, a total of 17 defendants were convicted, the main defendant Jan Bula received the death penalty. The charges were high treason, sabotage, espionage and similar offenses; the fathers were condemned, among other things, as agents of a foreign power, the Vatican.
In the 15 trials that make up the Babice case, a total of 107 people were sentenced, eleven of them to the death penalty and the rest to a total of more than 1,375 years imprisonment. One of those involved in the Babice attack, Stanislav Plichta, who was only sentenced to death by hanging in 1953, was shot in the attack, had to be supplied with catheters and was paralyzed from the belt downwards; he had to be carried to execution.
consequences
As evidenced by some documents found later, even the appeals were only a formal matter. The appeal of those sentenced to death was to take place on August 1, 1951. However, as early as July 31, 1951, the President's Office informed President Gottwald , who could then have issued an amnesty, and passed on information from the Ministry of Justice that the executions would take place on August 3, 1951. The result of the appeal was therefore already known before the appeal process.
The speed that accompanied all decisions is also astonishing. The investigation into the Babice shooting on July 2, 1951 was completed in about three days; the first trial took place in Jihlava on July 12, 1951 and lasted three days, the appeal was formally carried out on August 1, an amnesty was rejected on August 2 and an amnesty was rejected on August 3, one month after the offense the first death sentences carried out.
The confiscation of property and the relocation of the families of the condemned were decided by the party's Central Committee before the trials began. The first families were deported about ten days after the verdict was pronounced, their property confiscated, and although they found poorly paid work in their new whereabouts, for a long time they had to pay the court costs and the heavy fines that were imposed at the same time.
The Babice Trial also marked the beginning of the so-called Kulake Action (“akce kulak”), which in the next few years resulted in the relocation of at least 2,000 families of self-employed farmers, mainly to the border areas.
These resettlements were later legitimized by a secret decision of the Ministry of National Security, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice of October 22, 1951 concerning family members of convicted large farmers and village rich people. This directive covered both the confiscation of property and relocation, and this included direct family members as well as other persons living in a household of the convicted person.
Making amends after 1989
The judgments of the political show trials of the 1950s against some prominent party members were corrected early on or repealed as illegal. Some reparations could already take place in the 1960s after the secret report of the party's so-called Kolder Commission was concluded; further judgments were then overturned during the Prague Spring 1968. Attempts by those convicted of the Babice trials to be rehabilitated on these occasions, however, failed.
With the fate of the largely unknown victims of other trials, including those in the Babice case, even the judiciary had major problems after the 1989 revolution. The extensive documentation of the ÚSTR Institute also records the many stages of reparation after 1989, in the following using the example of the convicts of the second trial in Jihlava from July 12 to 14, 1951 with the main defendant Mityska:
- In its hearing on December 4, 1990, the District Court in Brno overturned the verdicts for eight convicts, but pronounced new sentences for the remaining six between 10 and 25 years.
- An objection to this judgment was heard before the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic on July 29, 1991; four of the previous sentences were shortened to 5 to 15 years, in two cases no prison sentence was imposed.
- The case was renegotiated on May 5, 1994, two of the judgments were shortened by five years each (to 5 and 10 years respectively); In all these proceedings, the rule of law of the court hearings of 1951 was recognized, which was even questioned by the internal party commission of the party-loyal functionary Kolder in 1962.
- Justice Minister Jiří Novák found that the Supreme Court responsible at the time had violated the law in 1951 and filed a complaint on behalf of the convicted in 1996, as a result of which the judgments were overturned.
In September 2011 the Catholic Church initiated the canonization of the executed priests Václav Drbola and Jan Bula. Both are to be beatified.
List of convicts
In the 15 main and subsidiary trials between 1951 and 1958, a total of 107 people were sentenced, 11 of them to death.
List of convicts in the main trials
|
Jihlava (July 12-14, 1951)
Moravské Budějovice (May 19-22, 1952)
|
Třebíč (November 13-15, 1951)
Prague (February 10, 1953)
|
List of convicts in the secondary trials
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Jihlava (December 11, 1951)
Znojmo (March 28, 1952)
Jihlava (April 13, 1952)
Jihlava (May 23, 1952)
Jihlava (June 30, 1952)
|
Znojmo (March 27, 1952)
Jihlava (May 15, 1952)
Jihlava (June 3, 1952)
Jihlava (June 4, 1952)
Brno (June 25, 1952)
Jihlava (August 15, 1958)
*) later died as a result of abuse during interrogation |
List of those sentenced to death and executed
- Antonin Mityska
- Antonín Plichta (Sr.)
- Drahoslav Němec
- František Kopuletý
- Antonín Škrdla
- P. Jan Bula
- P. Václav Drbola
- P. František Pařil
- Gustav Smetana
- Jaroslav Melkus
- Stanislav Plichta
Source and individual references
Source for this article:
- Adolf Rázek: Tax advisor + justice. nástroje třídního boje v akci Babice. [Tax + Justice. Instruments of class struggle in Action Babice], publication of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes ÚSTR , approx. 300 pages including documentation, Prague 2002/03, ISBN 80-86621-02-2 , online at: policie.cz/ .. .
Evidence from this source (marked with an asterisk + number in the text):
- ↑ a b Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. Cit., Page 16f.
- ^ Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. O., page 19
- ↑ a b c d Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. Cit., Page 7f.
- ↑ a b Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. Cit., Page 31f.
- ^ Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. O., page 29
- ^ Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. O., page 30
- ^ Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. O., page 37.
- ^ Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. Cit., Page 38f.
- ^ Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. a. a. O., page 26ff.
Other individual evidence :
- ↑ A note in the Lidové noviny newspaper from June 22, 2007, online at: Nové svědectví: střelbu v Babicích… - Lidové noviny - June 22, 2007 , Czech, accessed on March 4, 2012
- ↑ Jan Bula (1920–1952) , a biography of the ÚSTR , online (archived) at: ustrcr.cz / ...
- ↑ Markéta Doležalová: Jan Bula (1920–1952) , a publication by the ÚSTR , online at: ustrcr.cz / ...
- ^ Karel Jech: Kolektivizace a vyhánění sedláků z půdy. [Collectivization and the expulsion of the peasants], Praha, Vyšehrad, 2008, ISBN 978-80-7021-902-7 , pp. 105f.
- ↑ From a report by the Ministry of Justice, quoted in Nové poznatky v akci Babice. [New findings in the Babice campaign], additions to the documentation: Adolf Rázek: StB + justice. nástroje třídního boje v akci Babice. Publication of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes ÚSTR , p. 3, online at: policie.cz / ...
- ↑ Secret Order 27/1951, online at: TRMNB_27_51 (PDF; 214 KB), Czech, accessed 5 March 2012
literature
- Luděk Navara, Miroslav Kasáček: And yet they stay close to us: The life and martyrdom of priests Jan Bula and Vaclav Drbola from Babice. Gerhard Hess Verlag, Bad Schussenried, 2019, ISBN 978-3-87336-637-4 (translation from Czech)
Web links
- The Babice case, a German-language description of the events on the Czech Radio, online at: The Babice case , accessed on March 4, 2012
- Případ Babice [The Babice case], description of the case on the Babice Municipality website, online at: Případ Babice ( memento of February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (Czech)