"To some Czechs, it was the greatest escape of the Cold War," the papers write. "But in Central Europe, where history is often rewritten, there are many others who view the five young Czechs who trudged 28 days through unfriendly, snow-covered Most Czechs have no access to retraining at work - survey ...
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Another Czech anti-Communist resistance group member decorated ... forest to reach West Berlin in 1953, as reckless murderers, the Iron Curtain equivalent of the Islamic terrorists of today," they add. "In October of that year, the five Czechs forced their way across Czechoslovakia's border with East Germany, headed for the American sector of divided Berlin.
What they thought would take five days took four weeks. They braved starvation, frostbite, bullet wounds and a hunt by 24,000 Soviet soldiers and East German police," the papers describe the daring escape. "Along the way, the self-proclaimed anti-communist fighters - the brothers Josef and Ctirad Masin and their childhood friends Milan Paumer, Zbynek Janata and Vaclav Sveda - hijacked cars, stole submachine guns, drugged adversaries with chloroform, broke into police stations and killed six people, slitting the throat of a policeman with a Boy Scout knife," they add. "Eventually, after hiding at night in branch-covered holes and traveling 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, three of them made it to West Berlin. They were debriefed by the CIA and then joined the U.S. Army in hopes of liberating their country. The other two - Janata and Sveda - were captured by the police and executed," the papers write. "When Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek decided to honor the men as heroes of the Czech Republic, the government expected some controversy in a nation still grappling with its communist past. It was not prepared for a searing debate that encapsulated all the ambivalence associated with the country's recent history," they add. "While a minority of Czechs praised the reward as a fitting tribute to freedom fighters who had dared to stand up to a repressive regime, nearly half the population, according to a poll conducted for Czech Television, called them criminals," the papers write. "Topolanek defended his decision, saying he wanted to show that the armed struggle against communism had been just as morally imperative as the fight against Nazism. The Czech Communist Party - an unreconstructed Marxist body that still commanded 13 percent of the popular vote in the most recent parliamentary elections, in 2006 - demanded that the men be stripped of their medals and tried for crimes. Others accused Topolanek of glorifying murder to demonize the left," the papers adds. "At a time when we are waging a fight against terrorism, these men are not good role models, and elevating them will lead us down a dangerous path," the papers quote Lubomir Zaoralek, a leading member of the opposition Social Democratic party, as having said. "For Paumer, an ebullient and wiry 76-year-old with a penchant for four-letter words and black leather jackets, the controversy merely proves what he has long thought: The Czech Republic remains in thrall to communism. Paumer, who became an American citizen after fleeing Czechoslovakia and drove a Miami taxi for 30 years before returning after the Velvet Revolution overturned Communist rule in his homeland in 1989, says the killings were a justifiable response to a totalitarian regime," the papers write. "We fought to free this country from communism and people are crying for six dead men," said Paumer. "But these people were casualties of war and I have no mercy for them. We, the real democrats, are crying for those who were terrorized by the communists for 40 years," he added. "Historians and sociologists say the government's decision to honor the men has tapped into a deep-seated but gnawing question about passivity during 41 years of Communist rule. Today, the Czech Republic, a member of NATO and the European Union, is among the former Soviet bloc's great economic success stories. Many here say they do not want to revisit a difficult past," the papers add. "People here cannot forgive Paumer and the Masin brothers because they showed that you could fight against communism and survive and win," Petr Placak, a leading liberal commentator, told the papers. "Most Czechs believe you had to suffer quietly and wait for better times, so it is far easier to call them 'killers' than to accept responsibility for our own impotence," Placak is quoted as having said. "Determined to get weapons for their struggle," Paumer said, "in 1951, the group broke into the local museum and stole several guns that were on display, then realized that the weapons lacked firing pins." "Frustrated, they decided to rob a police station. Paumer recalled that they had used an ambulance as their get-away car: He helped hijack the vehicle by feigning a broken leg. When a policeman at the station refused to open the safe, Ctirad Masin subdued him with chloroform, before cutting his throat. The three fled with six submachine guns and eight pistols," the papers write. "The next day, all hell broke loose and cops were everywhere," said Paumer, who was then 21. "We left the policeman on the floor, covered with blood. We wanted to show the communists what could be done, that we could kill, that we could fight back too." With weapons at their disposal, Josef Masin said, the friends needed money. In 1953, robbed a security van that every Friday transported payroll funds - about one million Czechoslovak crowns, or $140,000 - from a manufacturing plant. Masin said he and his brother held up the van by dressing up in militia outfits and holding up a red stop sign when the van passed by a bend. When the cashier in the car refused to hand over the money and pulled out a gun, Masin said. Masin lunged at the man, pressed the gun into his shoulder blades and pulled the cashier's index finger twice on the trigger. "We were waiting for an East-West conflict to break out," Paumer told the papers. "We expected World War III between Russia and the United States. We were desperate to get to the Americans so we could help fight the communists," he added. Josef Masin said that he and his brother had refused to return to the Czech Republic because the communist party had not been outlawed. "The same people who we fought against are still running the place," he told the papers, declaring that he felt no remorse about the killings. "Paumer finally returned to Czechoslovakia in 1991 and lives in a tiny, sparsely decorated apartment in Podebrady, Central Bohemia, its only adornment a beer poster and his medal displayed in a glass case," the papers said. "I'm proud to be an American," Masin said. "It was the Czechs who let me down." "They never do anything for themselves," he told the papers. "The older generation should be ashamed they collaborated with the communists. They always have some damn excuse."
(Ceske Noviny)
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