"We got in, he was tied up. I have never talked about it. The short version was just that we broke out the back of the cupboard, that we stepped on it. What exactly happened was that we walked in, we saw a cupboard with a big door bolt, a thick steel bolt, and a big padlock on it. I asked him [the policeman] where the keys to the cupboard were. He said only the commander had them, that was clearly bullshit. If he was on duty, he had to be able to get to the guns. There was no way the commander would come in and open it. They had machine guns and the guard had to have access to them. Yeah, right, the commander! I told Janata, 'Let's look for the keys.' I told Janata to look in the desk. We started looking on the walls to see if there were the keys. He saw us, at first. He said the commander had them, and he saw that we didn't believe him, that we were looking for them. He obviously had the clear intention, he didn't want to tell us where the keys were. If they were in his pocket, if they were in a drawer or hanging somewhere... If the commander and the others had come in the morning, they would have said, 'How come you gave them the keys?' When we were not satisfied with the answer that the commander had them, he said, 'Knock the cupboard down and step on it from the back.' The next day he would have looked better for not giving us the keys. The comrade advised us in order to make him look better in front of the others. We knocked down the cupboard, stepped on it, we were taking the machine guns out, Janata was carrying them to the car. Meanwhile, I put this fellow to sleep with chloroform, then I cut his throat. But it wasn't that easy, the knife was as blunt as a hoe. I should have known better. I was used to, how should I put it, skinning rabbits and killing animals. I knew what it would take to cut through tendons or ligaments, that the tool had to be sharp. And this was a hunting knife, but it wasn't sharpened properly. It was hard, but when I started it, I finished it. Then we closed it and walked away."
"I had partisan training by then, they had taught us how to kill. Put a steel wire around their neck and strangle them. Another way was to hit the person, roll them on the ground and kick them in the head, in the temple. Step on their neck or cut their throat. They used to show us, it was eliminating a guard. Grab them from behind with your left hand, if you were left-handed, the other way around. Hold their mouth with the left hand so they couldn't scream. A knife in your right hand, stick it under their throat and cut forward and cut the arteries and cut the throat. Then push down with the left hand so nobody could hear the blood gushing, it was well thought-out. But the instructions weren't very good, the boy who taught us only knew it from theory, he certainly had no experience. I wondered what to do: Hit him over the head, or kick him, or step on his neck? First of all, ask him to give up voluntarily, put him to sleep with chloroform to avoid the struggle. Once a person sees they are being attacked, they'll fight back and defend themselves. It was necessary to prevent resistance, best to let him give up, put him to sleep and kill him. Kick him in the head, step on his neck or cut his throat. I told myself I wanted to try it with the cutting his throat, to see how it would work. I had a hunting knife, kind of a dagger, a great hunting knife, it had a hunting scene engraved on the blade, and I took it with me on my belt and we went at it."
"Then [the Germans] were retreating from Kolín through a pine forest, there were marshes beyond the Elbe and then sandhills, raised ground. It was a pine forest, all pine trees, and there was a road going through it, a pretty good highway, concrete, I mean. There was a pretty sharp curve behind that pine forest for some reason, the forest was elevated above the marshes by the Elbe towards Poděbrady. It was the one on the raised bank, such a curve. I wasn't there when it happened, I didn't get there until later. A German assault gun was going and they probably went off the road, whether they were drunk or they couldn't handle it... It rolled down the slope and ended up belly up, the thing. Then it was on fire and it was exploding. There was a dead body thrown next to it, a man burnt black. Torso, arms torn off, head ripped off from the jaw up. It was completely black, head ripped off. It was lying there for days."
"The biggest scumbags, I remember a few of those assholes, used to come to power in the town. They were suddenly amazingly important. You could see it in their behaviour too, how self-important they were. I always think of that when I talk about it, it showed me clearly what the rise of the proletariat meant. That was a memorable thing for me, that was the characteristic of the regime and the people who were there. One man had a brother in America, when the industry took off here after the war and they started making cars again, he sent him one of the first post-war cars, a Chevrolet, a huge shiny car, it was something special. American car, such a colossus, he was driving it around Poděbrady, everyone admired it. Then I heard that the town national committee summoned him and told him to give it to the city national committee to use. I guess he told them to get stuffed, and suddenly the nice man disappeared and the national committee was driving his car. What happened to him I don't know, maybe he ended up in prison. That´s how it happened."
"I remember when they went swimming in the Elbe, a rowing boat on the Elbe and a bunch of naked Russians in a boat. One of them fell into the water and started to drown, he couldn't swim, they were laughing at him, great fun. They were laughing at him and let him drown. 'Nas mnogo, [There is a lot of us]' that was their motto: 'Eto nitchevo, nas mnogo. [It doesn´t matter, there is a lot of us.]' Human life absolutely worthless... I remember there was a unit camped at the economical school. We met them, one had a row of watches up to his elbow, one next to the other. So I ask him, who had it? A German who didn't want to give it to him, so he took a sabre, cut off his arm with it and took the watch. And they didn´t work, he didn't even know he had to wind it up."
" How many years did you serve in the U.S. Army?" - "I served five and a half years and the boys served five." - "You left the army, as described in the literature, that your expectations of the conflict were not met." - "Nothing was happening, we left, it was just the end of the Korean conflict and Vietnam wasn´t in sight, there were no problems, we wanted to leave the army, that there would be no conflict, we didn't like serving in a peacetime army." - "If the conflict in Vietnam had broken out earlier, would you have stayed there, would Vietnam have been a motivation for you?" - "We definitely would have stayed there. When I got out of the army in 1959, I got ill shortly after it. I was tempted to go back into the army, I was borderline, quite old and I would be starting from scratch. I wasn't army material, I was a sick person."
"That was in Bartholomějská Street, I never got a really big beating, it wasn't like the treatment that took place in Domeček [Little House - torture chamber in Hradčany, trans.]. It was different in Domeček, they interrogated soldiers there, those weren't interrogations, they tried to beat what they wanted to hear out of them. Then they really went hard at them, hardly ever anybody did it voluntarily, to tell them what they wanted to hear or confess to something. They already had a plan ready when they brought in there the soldiers from the Western Front and the members of Svoboda´s Army and, 'Confess to treason!' Even though they never had done anything and they had never lifted a finger against them. They were beating them for so long, but of course people didn't want to confess. I didn't have anything like that, because they didn't try to blame me, they didn't have anything against me. I was an ordinary kid, but if they had used me as a young person in a trial, there were a lot of them, join them with a trial, then - God help you, then they started torturing them. But a normal investigation, they couldn´t manage that, it was second-rate stuff. These weren't experienced police officers, these were fast-track investigators, in some course of a few weeks they were told how to behave, that's what they were taught, some stereotyped questions. They told them how to behave, how to ask questions, we need that they confessed to you to this or that. So they leaned into you. But it wasn´t fun for me, anyway. I had four days and four nights of interrogation. I am always reading how various people are saying who interrogated them, names, Grebeníček. To this day, I don't know what the men's names were, they didn't introduce themselves to you. That was an executive clerk, you called him, 'Mr. executive clerk' There were five of them, that was the team. One of them used to tell you off, in a fatherly way. One was strict, one of them I called the butcher. He grabbed me by the throat and slammed me against the wall, dug his keys and his fingers under my jaw and poked me in the ribs and kicked me and stepped on my feet and all kinds of little things like that."
"There were several kinds of prisoners around me, state political, retribution decree prisoners - collaborators with the Germans, and criminals, attic thieves and robbers, these groups. It was impossible to say who was who, anyone could say anything. The criminals didn't try to act as political among us, they didn't want to be treated as political by the guards. The retribution decree prisoners had been there since the end of the war, they were settled in, they had a special status, they stuck together and they knew how things worked there, it was such a special class. I was assigned to them at the Marianská mine, where I was a carpenter, there were two retribution prisoners and one Czech, Josef, I only know his name, not his surname, he was said to be a forester. He had a higher sentence, I don't know why he was in prison. I didn't talk much to people. I remember the names of two retribution prisoners, Hanousek [was one of them]. I read in a book by Čvančara that he was some big bastard and he cooperated a lot with the Germans. Then there was Rýdl, Hanousek was an older guy, he had a pipe, a kind of grandfather type, but he didn't smoke. Rýdl and Josef, I don't know what they were there for. But they were fat compared to the conditions there, especially Josef looked very fat, otherwise the prisoners were skinny because there was not enough food."
"The next year it was in two camps in the Jáchymov region. After the trial at Pankrác I went to a common cell, then on a bus and a ride to Jáchymov. I didn't know where I was going. The first shaft was Prokop, number eight, one of the bigger camps. I was there for a while, then they moved me to Mariánská. I think that was shaft four. At Prokop we used to walk to the shaft, there was a corridor with wires on both sides, higher banks, and in between an ungraveled, unpaved muddy road, almost knee-deep mud, it leaked even into my high boots. It was like a trough. The prisoners walked close together so they couldn't escape, along them the guards and wires, the guards walking on the raised bank. What a pleasure to go to the shaft [ironically, ed.], at the Mariánská mine we were taken by truck to the shaft to work. The problem was in winter, especially. We waited sometimes, I think up to seven hours for a ride back to the shaft after our shift before they finally took us back. In the summer it wasn't so bad, but in the winter you came out completely wet, and we did have work clothes, rubber suits, but they were only good for a few days. Their quality was poor. It started to leak through the seams, it ran on us, in the rock you had water everywhere. You sweated in a rubber suit, it didn't let air through, you sweated when it wasn't raining on you. The fumes were coming off your body, you were wet, you went out and you were completely wet whether it was raining or you were sweating. There was a gale and a blizzard outside, bloody freezing in the mountains. We were running like crazy to keep warm. We also pressed against the pipe where the compressed air from the compressor room was. The pipes were fifty centimeters long, and they were hot as they drove the air into the shaft. We pressed against them to keep ourselves warm."
"After arriving at the camp, I couldn't even take off my frozen work suit, even the burlap rags, it was all frozen. You set them up and they were standing on the floor. But you couldn't take them off, dry them and go to sleep. There was a bed waiting for me, a bunk bed, a straw mattres, but that wasn't stuffed well enough, there was a hollow in it. A man sank into it, had a little warmth on both sides, two torn dirty blankets. We used to climb in in wet rags, first of all it was cold, there was only a small stove in the middle to heat up, we used to make coffee or toasted bread on it. But you couldn't take the rags off and let them dry. You were drying them and someone stole them to keep themselves warmer. So you slept in them. And of course the bedbugs, the house was moving with bedbugs, the lights came on at night and the ceiling was reddish brown and covered with bedbugs. I didn't have a problem with them, they didn't like me, I think one bit me once and passed the message to the others. They didn't bite me at all, but the boys were swollen, red, bitten by bedbugs."
"First of all, I might say something about Chlumec. We discussed it before we went for it. There were two suggestions on how to disable the police officer who was on duty there. It is still said kept that we just wanted guns and we didn't want to do any harm to anybody. It's not like that, nobody has asked us how it was planned. We needed the weapons to kill the communists. There was no other way to have a debate with them, it was useless to debate with them. They were executing people, shooting them at the border, a rough action deserves rough reaction. We were going to the first station in Chlumec, it was a question of whether to kill the person who would opened up to us immediately or to ask him to give up and kill him afterwards. Whoever was there was destined for liquidation. We've got guns to kill, so we start killing those we take them from. There were two suggestions. I was of the opinion that it would be better to tell him to surrender without fight. People, if they're not being brutally attacked, don't tend to fight back, they'd rather give up and try to handle it the easy way so they don't get hurt. Joseph said, 'Hit him over the head, knock him out right away.' All right, here's what we'll do, I'll hit him with a steel peg from a T-34 tank, a connecting track from a T-34. That was a pretty thick bar, forty centimeters long, maybe even half a meter long, about as thick as a thumb. I hit him with the bar, it didn't work, it didn't kill him or knock him out. He wanted to shoot, he pulled out his pistol and Josef shot him."
"This is war, and someone made up the story that [I killed] an ordinary foot soldier. But since when do they shoot generals like the first? It's been a long time since, the time that commanders were at the head of their regiments like some Alexander of Macedon. The clowns in charge get their turn at the end. First the foot soldiers fight among themselves, we are spoken of - the common foot soldiers. We were common foot soldiers too. And that we should have been benevolent with them - no, they supported the regime, and in the end it turned out that psychologically it did great harm. Now [it is said that he was] drugged. In my opinion, no communist asshole deserved such an easy death, he was drugged and didn't know about it. They [communists] tortured people, told them repeatedly that they were going to execute them to scare them, and the execution didn't take place. They tortured them before the execution, even their families. We put him to sleep. He thought he was going to wake up, report us and describe us, he thought I was going to put him to sleep, he woke up dead. That must have been quite a surprise for him. That it was inhumane, that's purposeful, to discredit us. They start bringing up the Geneva Convention and all that crap, killing prisoners of war. That was no war. Killing prisoners of war. Those were [communist] murders, and they changed the laws to make them look legal. Those were murders. And POWs? All things considered, the purpose of those weapons was to shoot the enemy. What are guns for? We didn't want to collect guns. We weren't gun collectors, guns were meant to be fought with. We wanted to fight with them. I keep reading about it, all sorts of people were collecting, gathering weapons, and apparently not thinking beyond that, what the weapons would be for. They're gonna be running around with them and shooting in the air when the US boys would come and liberate us. That's what happened in the forty-fifth, a bunch of partisans were suddenly armed and they were playing smart. That's not the purpose of the game, guns are for fighting."
He disposed of communists ruthlessly. In prison, he learned what monsters there were among them
Ctirad Mašín was born on 11 August 1930 in Olomouc. His father was Josef Mašín, a well-known legionary, army officer and resistance fighter, executed by the Nazis in 1942. Ctirad had a younger brother Josef and a sister Zdena. His mother graduated from the Czech Technical University, majoring in land surveying. She died in 1956 in prison in Prague – Pankrác. She was transported there from Pardubice where she had been serving a 25-year sentence for her sons‘ anti-communist resistence. During the war, the family moved from Prague to Poděbrady, where Ctirad Mašín finished primary school. There he experienced frequent house searches and plundering of their flat by the Gestapo, food shortages, as well as the liberation of the town by the Red Army and looting by Soviet soldiers. After the war, he and his brother Josef were awarded the Medal of Valour by President Edvard Beneš. During the war they had hidden two Jews and a Soviet prisoner of war on the run. They also had destroyed military trains and German war equipment stored on them. After the war, Ctirad Mašín graduated from the Real Grammar School in Poděbrady. At that time he was not interested in politics, he was a member of Sokol, Scout and played football. However, he could perceive the power of communist propaganda, the change in the behaviour of his teachers and the first disappearances of people around him. In the days of the communist coup in February 1948, he was in Prague by chance. Watching the armed members of the People‘s Militia, he understood that times were changing. This soon manifested itself in the banning of Sokol and Scout, people being fired from work, the first political trials and executions. Ctirad, his brother Josef and his uncle Ctibor Novák founded an anti-communist resistance group. At that time he was already studying at the Czech Technical University in Prague. At first they carried out minor actions, such as destroying communist propaganda showcases. In order to obtain modern machine guns, in 1951 they raided two National Security Corps (SNB) offices (in Chlumec nad Cidlinou and in Čelákovice). Ctirad Mašín killed policeman Jaroslav Honzátko with a knife during an action in Čelákovice. In Chlumec, Josef Mašín killed policeman Oldřich Kašík with a handgun. The siblings decided to leave for the West. But their illegal border crossing in the autumn of 1951 failed. On the eve of their departure, State Security arrested Ctirad Mašín, Josef Mašín and Ctibor Novák after being reported to police by an agent provocateur. Ctirad Mašín spent eleven months in pre-trial detention. The interrogations, using violence and sleep deprivation, took place in Bartolomějská Street in Prague. The State Court in Prague sentenced Ctirad Mašín to two and a half years in prison for not reporting criminal activity. In the Prokop and Mariánská labour camps in Jáchymov, he mined uranium under inhumane working conditions. He was released from there after a presidential amnesty at the end of May 1953. During Ctirad‘s imprisonment, Josef Mašín and Václav Švéda robbed a car with the wages for the employees of the Kovolis company, and Josef Mašín shot and killed the cashier Josef Rošický during a fight. After his return from prison, in the summer of 1953 Ctirad Mašín participated in the theft of almost 100 kilograms of donarit explosives from the Kaňk mine and in the setting fire to stacks belonging to cooperative farms in the Prostějov region. As the young members of the group were in danger of being called to the military service, they decided to make another attempt to escape to democratic and free Western Europe. They wanted to join the American army, undergo military training and return to Czechoslovakia to lead the fight against the communist regime. On October 3, 1953, they took advantage of the still passable border with the Soviet-occupied eastern part of Germany and headed for the American zone in West Berlin. However, they were pursued by East German police and Soviet troops, and only the Mašín brothers and Milan Paumer arrived in West Berlin on 31 October 1953. During this arduous journey, Ctirad Mašín shot four members of the Volkspolizei, who organised a massive chase of the group. Other members of the group, Václav Švéda and Zbyněk Janata, were arrested by the East German police and handed over to Czechoslovakia. Both of them, together with Ctibor Novák, were executed in May 1955. The Mašín brothers and Milan Paumer became members of the American army, but never returned to communist Czechoslovakia. They served in special forces in the USA. Ctirad Mašín left the army after five and a half years of service. He was a businessman until his retirement. In 2008, he received the Honorary Plaque of the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek. Ctirad Mašín died on 13 August 2011 in Cleveland, Ohio.
The police station in Čelákovice, which was assaulted by Ctirad Mašín in September 1953 and where he killed the National Security Corpses officer Jaroslav Honzátko
The police station in Čelákovice, which was assaulted by Ctirad Mašín in September 1953 and where he killed the National Security Corpses officer Jaroslav Honzátko
Vladimír Hradec (left) with his father and brother in the second half of the 1930s in Poděbrady. Vladimír Hradec was sentenced to 22 years in prison in the 1955 trial of the Mašín brothers´ group, his father and mother to 18 years, his brother to 16 years.
Vladimír Hradec (left) with his father and brother in the second half of the 1930s in Poděbrady. Vladimír Hradec was sentenced to 22 years in prison in the 1955 trial of the Mašín brothers´ group, his father and mother to 18 years, his brother to 16 years.
Second from the right Václav Švéda in Sokol, 1936. In a trial in 1955, he was sentenced to death for resistance against communism, led by a group of Mašín brothers.
Second from the right Václav Švéda in Sokol, 1936. In a trial in 1955, he was sentenced to death for resistance against communism, led by a group of Mašín brothers.
Václav Švéda (right) with his father František and brother Zdeněk in the early 1930s. Father František Švéda was sentenced to 15 years in prison in relation to his son's anti-communist resistance, Zdeněk Švéda to 20 years in prison.
Václav Švéda (right) with his father František and brother Zdeněk in the early 1930s. Father František Švéda was sentenced to 15 years in prison in relation to his son's anti-communist resistance, Zdeněk Švéda to 20 years in prison.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
