Current Affairs Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes maps lives of Czechs executed by Communists
On Tuesday, the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes announced a new project on its website, posting the biographies of individuals who were brutally sentenced to death by Czechoslovakia’s Communists. Using archive material, the site has so far examined the lives of some 19 individuals, who, like Milada Horákova, were executed on trumped up charges of treason.
The early years following the Communist rise to power in Czechoslovakia
were among the very darkest in Czech history, with thousands of
individuals
persecuted by the regime. This week, the Institute for the Study of
Totalitarian Regimes revealed a new internet project aimed at remembering
those who were targeted, victims who were sentenced and executed on
trumped up charges.
The lives of 19 executed in 1948/49 have been profiled so far, including
senior military officers such as Bohuslav Hubálek and Karel Šabela. Six
others profiled were sentenced to death on charges they had planned a coup
to try and overthrow the regime. But that is only a start: eventually the
institute would like to publish profiles of all 262 individuals executed
by
the regime. Petr Mallota is a specialist at the institute heading the
project:
Petr Mallota
“The Communists wanted to create a pervasive mood of fear. They
chose
these individuals as potential threats to the new regime, most often on
fake and often ludicrous charges; but each of these who was targeted, was
targeted for slightly different reasons. Some really were involved in the
resistance, others had been involved in the western military - all were
perceived as dangerous politically. It is unfortunate, but these people
who
we’ve profiled have largely been forgotten, especially among the broader
public. So getting their stories out is one of the project’s aims.
The hope is to build a far closer picture of those who died - that means sifting through extensive archive material from different sources. Petr Mallota once again:
“The biographies we’ve put up make use of extensive archive
material
– from our own archives at the institute, to military documents, to
legal
police and courtroom documents. Last but not least, we’ve made use of
extensive material, obviously the saddest and most difficult reading,
mapping the last days of the victims as they awaited execution: final
letters to loved ones and so on. Not everything of course has been
released: what we’ve done is made a selection giving readers a closer,
more personal look at their lives.”
Anyone interested in the project should visit the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes webpage: the address is www.ustrcr.cz
