Milada Horáková

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Milada Horáková (1949).

Milada Horáková (born Králová; born December 25, 1901 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; † June 27, 1950 Prague, Czechoslovakia ) was a Czechoslovak politician ( ČSNS ), resistance fighter and women's rights activist . In a show trial during the political trials in Czechoslovakia 1948-1954, she was sentenced to death in 1950 and executed.

Life

Milada Králová received her PhD from Charles University in Prague in 1926 . Afterwards she worked for the city administration of Prague in the departments of social affairs, housing and labor. From 1927 she was married to the agricultural engineer Bohuslav Horák, in 1933 she gave birth to their daughter Jana.

Political activity

As a young woman, Horáková was involved in the Czech women's movement in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1923 she was one of the co-founders of the Ženská národní rada (abbreviated ŽNR, German "National Women's Council"), in 1946 she played a leading role in the revival of the council under the new name Rada československých žen RČŽ (Council of Czechoslovak Women), which she was elected chairman has been. She also joined the Czechoslovak People's Socialist Party (ČSNS) in 1929 .

1939 Horáková went into the Czechoslovak resistance against National Socialism and worked in the resistance groups Petiční výbor Věrni zůstaneme , Politické ústředí and in the umbrella organization ÚVOD . After a short time she was arrested by the Gestapo . She initially spent two years in Pankrác prison and was held in the Theresienstadt concentration camp . She was then sentenced to forced labor in a munitions factory in Leipzig . As an agitator she was thrown into prison again, sentenced to death in Dresden , pardoned and finally liberated by the US Army in 1945.

After her liberation she lived in Prague, where she acted against the Communist Party . She advocated political pluralism , which in her opinion alone could protect freedom and individualism. Horáková was a member of the ČSNS in the Czechoslovak Parliament. After the communist overthrow of February 1948, she resigned from her mandate.

Show trial and death

Persecuted as a critic of the regime under the Stalinist regime of Klement Gottwald , she had to go underground again. Eventually she was arrested and sentenced to death on June 8, 1950 in a show trial before the newly established state court for “anti-Soviet conspiracy ”, “ high treason ”, “ espionage ” and “subversive behavior”. Jan Buchal , Záviš Kalandra and Oldřich Pecl were also sentenced to death in the same trial . Many personalities campaigned in vain for Horáková's pardon, including Albert Einstein , Bertrand Russell , Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt . The prosecutor was Josef Urválek . She was executed on June 27, 1950 in Pankrác Prison in Prague . Her body was cremated in the Strašnice crematorium in the Vinohrady cemetery , and the ashes were anonymously buried on the cemetery grounds.

Rehabilitation

On July 30, 1968, in the final stages of the Prague Spring , the highest court of the ČSSR posthumously overturned the judgment and ordered the prosecution to review the case.

It was fully rehabilitated in 1990 after the Velvet Revolution . The Prosecutor Horákovás, Ludmila Brožová-Polednová (1921–2015), was sentenced to six years imprisonment by the Supreme Court in Prague on September 9, 2008 for involvement in judicial murder ; after a year and eight months in prison, she was pardoned.

Honors

The Czechoslovak President Václav Havel awarded Milada Horáková in 1991 posthumously the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Order, 1st Class, one of the highest national awards. A cenotaph was erected for them in the Vyšehrad cemetery in 2000 , and their real remains can be found on the grounds of the Strašnice crematorium. Horáková is venerated as a martyr for freedom, as evidenced by the fact that the memorial for the victims at the Iron Curtain near Cheb was inaugurated on the 56th anniversary of her death in 2006.

In 2009 a monument with her bust of Milan Knobloch was erected for her in front of the Pankrác prison , the place of her execution . In 2010 the asteroid (44530) Horáková, discovered in 1998, was named after her. A street on Letná Hill in the north of Prague also bears her name. In 2020, Milada Horáková was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Double Cross 1st Class by the Slovakian President Zuzana Čaputová .

Horáková's life is traced in the biopic Milada with the Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer in the title role. The film received the Bohemian Lion in 2017 .

Web links

Commons : Milada Horáková  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen Brown: "Show Trial" legalist who sent Czech dissident Milada Horakova to the gallows in 1950 gets eight years , March 12, 2007
  2. ↑ Jana Horakova-Kansky - Still proud of mother's enormous courage " , radio.cz 23 May 2007 at
  3. ↑ Sibylle Duda: Milada Horáková , short curriculum vitae of FemBio - women's biographical research (online at: fembio.org / ... ; accessed on March 7, 2019).
  4. ↑ Eva Uhrová: Rada československých žen , Editor Gender Studies / Portal Feminismus (online at: feminismus.cz / ... ; accessed on March 7, 2019).
  5. ↑ Květa Jechová: Emancipace shora , in: Paměť a dějiny 4/2013 (publications of ÚSTR ; online at: ustrcr.cz / ... ; accessed on March 7, 2019).
  6. ↑ Judgment of June 8, 1950 ( Memento of August 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Prokurátorka procesu s Horákovou dostala 6 let podle práva z roku 1852 , news magazine iDNES-cz, September 9, 2008, online at: idnes.cz / ...
  8. ↑ Christian Falvey: former show-trial prosecutor freed by presidential pardon. In: Radio Prague , December 22, 2010 (English).
  9. ↑ Milada Film
personal data
SURNAME Horáková, Milada
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Králová, Milada (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1950
Place of death Prague