Most Prolific Murder In History Killed Ten Thousand Prisoners

And know who had grown for whom and for whose life

Who has paid whose debt

To whom and in what currency

Who will command which psalm to chant

Who died for Whom

And for whose sin

MOST PROLIFIC MURDERER IN HISTORY KILLED TEN THOUSANDS PRISONERS

Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin was son of a Russian muzhik born on January 1895. In 1921 he became a Cheka member and six years later he was promoted to superintendent of NKVD, the Soviet Intelligence agency. Rapidly he became chief of the new Kommandatura, NKVD special unit. It was an elite group organized in military fashion; in fact NKVD was more or less a military group. I task was to perform the "black work". This work included murders, spying, interrogation with using torture, and night arrests which would later perfect Gestapo under program called "NACHT UND NEBEL" when people were grabbed silently at night and hauled to strict isolation so that they could not be traced for months, years or never. The purpose of this method was intimidation of the relatives and creation of insecurity and fear.

He worked at the notorious Lubyanka prison and later reported directly to Stalin from he was taking his orders which explains his survival during frequent elimination of security personnel. Unlike Yezhov and Henry Yagoda, the two heads of NKVD, in Soviet hierarchy practically ministers of Security, he was not persecuted; on the opposite, Blokhin with his own hand executed both by shot into the back of the head for which Germans invented technical term Genickschuss. Blokhin might have killed three security heads: Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria, although there are some doubts about the last one. The fourth, Menzhinski died of angina although Yagoda insisted he had killed him.

It is noteworthy to describe my confusion with Henry Yagoda' name. "Henry" is Anglicized Russian name Genrikh which can be affectingly changed to Zhenya or Zhenka; In Russian it is pronounced like German “Heinrich", and since Russian does not has H, it is replaced by G. I remember his condemnation by one of his close female relatives who knew the crimes he had committed; ”Zhenka was arrested. Serves him right". I also remember this phrase from fellow traveler Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon where a prisoner is brought to a cell in Lubyanka and by knocking on the wall made a contact with a prisoner in the next room. They conversed through a knocking on the wall. In Soviet prisons the inmates used a slow, complicated system developed before the revolution while we adopted the fast and simple Morse code. One knock meant dot and two quickly following each other signified dash. One had to learn the code, but it was easy. After more than fifty years I have forgotten the code, yet I still remember my call signal three dots and two dashes which I inherited from my cellmate Mirek Seferovich who was pilot of one of the three aircraft that flew together to freedom and returned in order to steal another one, but was caught. My dot dot dot dotdot dotdot or ... -- meant “three."

After some time new prisoner described himself and his neighbor identified him or he introduced himself as Nikolai Bukharin, an elite bolshevik. He received an appreciative message: "Serves you good." Sentenced to death in one of the show trials, Bukharin was shot by Blokhin.

Back to Zhenka Yagoda. In one of my sources appeared repeatedly the name "Berry". In no other book I discovered "Berry". I thought it was his baptismal name not realizing that in social science resources the given name is employed only together with family name. I do not know how it came to my mind whether it was not his nickname, yet in history articles nicknames are used as illustration, not frequently. I look at "Yagoda" and had an explanation ready, not understanding how I could have missed it. "Yagoda" with slight derivation means ”strawberry" in Slavic languages: for example, in my native language is it "Yahoda". Had I seen "strawberry" instead of ”berry" I would understand the meaning immediately. Obviously, the essay was translated inaccurately by a computer which cannot realize names of persons are not to be translated at all Most of the political murders were committed by district or provincial Cheka, a security organization committed to battle counterrevolution with wide discretion and unlimited power. The difference between NKVD and Cheka was that this was an independent body while that was Ministry of Internal Affairs, but the results of their activities were identical: annihilation of political enemies. If there were some rules or laws both services were allowed to disregard them and both operated without any responsibility. At least one member of an occasional tribunal was member of either organization, a superficial point since the sentence was predetermined; there were neither counsels nor witnesses for defense. Besides Yagoda and Yezhov Blokhin shot to death Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamensky, and all the prominent political celebrities sentenced in Moscow show trials in the thirties. He did not hesitate to execute Yezhov under whom he had started working, and shortly before the fatal shot Yagoda beat him. When twenty-three months later it would come Yagoda's turn, in show of revenge or solidarity with Yezhov he ordered the guards to beat Yagoda just before his end. Or as many criminals his act has no purpose; like Leopold and Loeb he murdered on whim or thrill; the opening sentence of biography of Henry Desire Landru, the Bluebeard of Gambais who in France killed eleven women points to possible Blokhin's motive, or better, lack of motive: "Nobody brought this man on the path of crime which has not equal in history of crime." As a killer, he was working like a mason or tailor; they come, punch in their timecard, build a wall or sew a vest, take break, eat and then punch out and go home. Blokhin put on an apron - several sources mention the apron - as not to soil his uniform and as the mason takes a trowel, he took the pistol. Although he was not paid by number of products he had manufactured, he was piece work laborer. One source mentions that he calculated number of his victims precisely. It took three minutes to kill the prisoner and clean the sound insulated execution cell. It had sloping floor and water hose so the side job was easy and might have been tidied by assistants. Sixty minutes makes one hour, sixty divided by three makes twenty dead in one hour; multiplied by eight working hours would give one hundred and sixty altogether; but in work like   Blokhin  people stay usually overtime without pay, and if propped by ardor, might ignore time. His reward was sufficient; the Badge of Honor in 1937 and four years later the Order of the Red Banner, the first not very distinguished since more than one and a half million Russians of lower ranks were displaying them on their rubashkas; they were awarded regularly to shock workers, sovchozniky, kolkhozniky, and Stakhanovs. The last was named after labour hero Aleksi Stakhanov. The Order of the Red Banner was a reward for bravery in combat or for twenty years of service which was later increased to thirty years. There is no record of Blokhinservice in Red Army, only in the Tsarist unit. He joined the Cheka in 1921 and was eligible for the Order in 1941; nevertheless, the rule of twenty years service was established three years later, in 1944. At that time Blokhin was recognized as Lubyanka official executioner who had shot all prominent prisoners sentenced in the show trials. Among them the crying Zinoviev asking the executioner to call Stalin, Kamenev, Radek, Piatakov, Bukharin, Yagoda, Yezhov, Tukhachevski, Muralov, and eight generals and marshals sentenced with Tukhachevski. After the trials from the prominent old Bolsheviks only Stalin and his enemy Trocki remained but Stalin would have Trocki murdered in Mexico. From the 32 passengers in the Sealed Train bringing Lenin to start the revolution in 1917, all living adults were whipped out. It is hard to ascertain the reliable numbers for among the passengers were wives and children, though such details did not mean much for Stalin. In 1936 when the first trial took place the kids were nineteen years older and susceptible to repression. Blokhin received his Order in the same year as two of the four major trials came about. From 62 indicted men 55 were sentenced to death, 21 of them in 1937 so it is possible he was rewarded for having shot the leading Soviet figures. It is true that had executed thousands of victims before, yet never of that distinction. In Kalinin prison in less than a month he shot more than 7000 Polish Prisoners of War from Ostaskhov camp. Certainly he murdered much more men -in fact among his victims at Katyn was a woman. Second lieutenant herself, wife of a colonel, and daughter of a general she possessed all the attributes of a potential victim and Russians could not pass the opportunity. Janina Lewandovska's father was General Jozef Dowbor Muscinski, who at the time of his daughter's murder he was dead, otherwise he would have been the fifteenth Polish general exterminated in the Katyn forest by Smolensk. She was a glider pilot, gliding planes having been popular in her country, an all-around talented sportswoman, married to colonel Lewandowski. At her death she was 32 years old. Protecting his major's uniform from the Polish blood with butcher style apron, with helmet and gauntlets he was producing corpses of innocent men like a mill machine operator produces part. They were loaded on trucks and brought to the mass graves in the Katyn forest. He carried number or Walter pistols since the almost incessant firing caused the weapon overheat. That was the reason he stopped shooting with the soviet Nagant which overheated after short time. Simple four grade mathematics shows that he could not execute seven thousand people in a month. He calculated three minutes per murder; at this rate he killed 20 prisoners each hour or 160 in an eight hours long working day. That makes 4800 dead in one month. It is possible that he had some help working in another execution cell or to the 4800 were added his victims from another NKVD prison; in Ostashkov camp where he worked there were 30 agents assigned to the massacre. He himself murdered more prisoners than the rest of his comrades in execution. Some sources note that his goal was 300 dead per night which means longer hours or less time per murder. With this speed in the 28 days of shooting he would have killed 8400 victims. It seems unlikely one man could kill 300 persons during night; obviously, there were others participating in the extermination. The 28 days period of Katyn murders is firmly established; it occurred in April and May 1940 so that it is excluded that the time for execution was extended and made possible Blokhin had killed in Ostashkov more than the accepted number of 7000 victims.  Maybe the missing 2200 dead were shot by Blokhin before after the victorious yet disastrous soviet war in Finland in 1939-1940 when many officers were executed for some erroneous decision, but mostly for nothing. Among the victims were several generals. If he was not involved in the Winter War, there were quite enough NKVD prison available where he could easily fulfill his quota. He leads to killers league by high margin. Recently arrested Antonio Acosta Hernandez one of the leaders of La Linea Cartel in Juarez is responsible for  more than 1500 murders, however, he by himself killed few, if any; the rest was killed on his orders. The person who murdered most victims by own hand is Amelia Dyer, a British woman who operated for about 30 years in the second  half of nineteen century and killed more than 400 babies she had contracted to raise for single mothers for pay. This business was called baby farm and there were few other women executed for the same type of murders. It is not surprise that the second most prolific murderer was a female. In the lists of mass killers females are represented quite well. 

Three years after Katyn he was promoted to general and assigned to political department of army in high function: he became Head of Political Officers Administration; these officers were called commissars or politruks. Their rank was equal to the highest ranked officer of the unit where the commissar was assigned. He was representative of the Party in the Army. Many conflicts issued from this arrangement and finally it was the commander who was given power to overrule the politruk, but still, their power was enormous. In Spanish war in the Interbrigade the commissars had unheard power over lives unknown in armed forces. After major Red Army disaster in Crimea where he completely failed as field commander he was demoted to Corps Commander. In Crimean campaign. Not too much publicized fact is that in Crimea Soviet loses exceeded that of in Stalingrad. Never before nor after, including battle for Berlin Red Army collapsed with more catastrophic results and Blokhin carried his part of responsibility. It is significant that in Moscow chain of command the appointment to such high position is considered a punishment. It shows the superiority of political regards over the army. Politruk with the rank of captain could overrule colonel. Hitler's "Commissars Order" proves that Germans were well aware of commissars' importance. Hated by from rank and file to marshals for their arrogance and fanatism it was they who were responsible for execution of numerous troops, again, from the rank and file to generals. One of the first generals shot in the first weeks of hostilities was Dimitry Pavlov plus eight others; from infantry commanders to air force generals Stalin continued to deprive himself of those whom he needed most: officers. He had shot numerous general after the Finnish debacle. He continued where he interrupted his terror on June 11, 1937,when one hour after the sentence shortly after midnight of June 10 captain Vassily Blochin executed marshal Tukhachevsky. General Pavlov and eight officers were sentenced on July 22, 1941. "Pablo", as he was known in Spain where he commanded a tank unit was sentenced for various crimes, but main charge was his incompetency. Several others high officers had to die after their return from Spain, yet at that time "Pablo" was spared. Many communists who sought asylum in Russia were never heard of again, among them Hungarian Bela Kun, leader of armed insurrection in Czechoslovakia. It seems a general had more chances survived on the battlefield than Stalin's disfavour. There exists evidence to this assumption. The top political commissar in the Interbrigade, the unit of deceived, sacrificed, betrayed, and disappointed young men who believed they defend paradise against Antichrist, was Hungarian communist, Slovakia born Dr. Erno Gero at various times the head of Hungarian government. His original name was Erno Singer. It is peculiar that another number one in Hungary, Janos Kadar who categorically requested Russian forces to suppress the 1956 revolution-and they obliged with political pleasure was born in Slovakia. To Gero we will return. Spanish war would be a lie without Interbrigade ineffectiveness and total confusion, and Interbrigade would be a lie without this commissar, "The butcher of Barcelona." The most common charges against the officers was incompetence; Stalin did not realize that it was hard to be competent against Fedor von Bock; under his command Germans executed a brilliant pincer movement in the area of Minsk and Bialystok. His attack opened on June 22, the very first day of war and one week later the operation was accomplished. It was such a success that the best German strategists believed the war was over. With the resources, manpower and configuration of the landscape in question no Napoleon or Alexander could have achieved more than Soviet generals did. As a prelude for the future but not coda to the past Soviet massacres of both civilians and soldiers, the army on the run recklessly exterminated inhabitants of Polish Bialystok including women and children as if playing the Lord: "And the Lord will call people from faraway country, from the last lands of the earth who will not forgive the old man nor show mercy to a baby. " Almost three hundred thousand Russian troops were taken prisoner, practically all of the two thousand five hundred tanks were destroyed. Among the dead was cavalry captain Zemljansky whose first and last son Victor will be born few months later and as an adult will become one of my best friends. Among the shot was Air Force general Tayurski, who had replaced his predecessor major general Kopec who committed suicide after his planes were exterminated in first days, if not hours, of the conflict. As Soviet infantry was ran over by German tanks so Rata was helpless against Messerschmidt, as was any fighter in the world until Spitfires stunned their adversaries. Given this situation it is incomprehensible Stalin would have executed his Air Force. Whom he did not execute was Air Force general Vasili Stalin, at the age of 27 the commander of Moscow Military District and alcoholic. He was cruel, rude, reckless, and vulgar as his father and thus he became his favored son. During war in 27 sorties he had shot down one German plane. After Stalin’s death he was charged with serious crimes including disappearance of people and under an anonym served term in prison. He died of alcoholism at the age of 42. After the war a German officer wrote his memoirs. With a moving compassion for his fellows in air, although enemies, he reminiscences how sorry he felt for his adversaries in hopelessly "lumbering" slow, unmaneuverable aircraft, waiting for their inevitably fatal end. The word "lumbering" I remember for decades. To win against stronger opponent is reason to be proud, but where the odds are zero to ten, it is pervert fighter who does not feel sorry for the antagonist, and the German writer was in full of sympathy with the Soviet pilots. Was Major General Tayurski responsible for this non-existent aircraft ? Russian Lavochkin, Rata or the lauded MiG were not match to Willi Messerschmidt product. Blame generals for the disaster is an insulting injustice and cruelty. It is as making general Gamelin or Weygand responsible for French defeat when the European power lasted only little longer than military modest Poland. United States delivered Soviet Union nearly 30000 fighters, mostly Aircobras and Kingcobras, yet they arrived much later. Most of the Luftwaffe aces flew on Eastern front. It must seem illogical that Erich Hartmann shot down 352 Soviet planes and Gerhard Barkhorn 301 when after few weeks of war an enemy plane was rarely seen on the sky: it can be compared the German skies empty of Messerschmidts, Heinkels and Focke Wulf towards the end of the war, during the invasion, and the Battle of Bulge. Similarly, after the plan to invade Britain was dropped, German aircraft might have appeared over England only when it got lost. It is possible to explain the rapid reappearance of Soviet planes which would enable German pilots reach the high scores. to Like Ford in an incredible short time converted the conveyors from producing cars to manufacturing tanks so Russians started production of planes in the safety of trans Ural territory that was beyond reach of German bombers. Coupled with the incessant convoys bringing the American Lend and Lease fighters, soon there were enough targets for German pilots. American planes were superior to Soviet and still, the later losses were awfully high. The most probable explanation is not lack of bravery on the part of Russian pilots, but rather lack of training and non-existent tactic in formation. One of my often remembered quotations I have read is "It is the bravest who die first." The success of Hartmann and Barkhorn shook my conviction: neither of them lost his life: or were there some more brave men than these two, but were shot down in combat before realizing their potential that was higher than that of "Bubi" Hartman and Gerhard Barkhorn? British criminologist Colin Wilson in several of his 114 fiction and non-fiction books that were translated into 14 languages, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic included proposes the idea of the "dominant 10 per cent. He had written a cycle of books under the title "Outsider." Here he suggests that in each specific group there is a 10 per cent collective that by far surpass the average of the rest of the assembly. For example, among a thirty murderers there are three whose crimes are more sophisticated or more cruel than those of the rest; they prepare the crime more subtly, and take care not to leave to much evidence. In a group of teachers there is 10 percent of eminent scholars while the rest is average; the principal will be chosen from these 10 per cent. Wilson's theory should not be confused with 10 per cent theory of Harvard professors Will James and Boris Sids whose study indicates that humans use only 10 per cent of its capacity. Wilson's conclusion is enormously supported by the war experience of British pilots. As only fraction of police officers shoot their weapons during their career and it is almost unknown that some of them use them twice, so most of the fighter pilots never shoot down an enemy plane, although they might have used their weaponry. Based on stunning, but incontrovertible statistics it was found that ten per cent of English pilots were responsible for ninety per cent kills while the remaining ninety per cent of German losses were shared among hundreds of pilots; the dominant theory need not any better support. As could be expected, in the age of equality there are detractors of the mathematical fact and various reason are offered but there is hard to parallel Mother Theresa and Joseph Stalin-they are not equal. Among German fighters, most of the scores were achieved on Eastern front against inferior opponents, but to reach eighteen kills in one day, or better half day since there was very little action in air during night, is amazing; from his 173 kills Emil Lang achieved 18 in one day. It is safe to assume that Bubi Hartman would have never shoot down 352 planes in the Western area of operation fighting Spitfires instead of Lavochkins, but it is as safe to assume he would be still ahead of his fellows. In WWII 101 pilots shot down more than 100 enemy aircraft each: 13 downed more than 200 each and two achieved more than 300 kills. It stresses the importance of the dominant ten per cent: for example, 101 men together managed to destroy more than 10.000 airplanes which represents considerable part of production, but the main loss were the thousands of killed or captured trained pilots; for better comparison 10.000 thousand aircraft represents one third of all American planes delivered to Russia in the Land-and-Lease program. Thirteen men in the more than two hundred kills category plus two with more than three hundred kills downed together 3579 aircraft; in average, 238 per pilot. In regard to war in the air there is no way to deny the dominant ten per cent theory was confirmed. Before we deal with Erno Gero/born Singer/ we have to mention shortly the communist equivalent of current international drug cartels-the Communist Internationale, better known as Comintern. As United Nation is organization of countries so Comintern was organization of communist parties. Its role was support anti government actions in particular countries, to undermine legal authorities, and spread communism by propaganda and violent acts. To become a member the Party had to fulfill 21 conditions. Its first head was Zinoviev, the one who at the execution was desperately kissing Blokhin's shoes and with moans begging him to call comrade Stalin. In Lyublanka Blokhin overruled comrade Stalin. Komintern was openly directed by Soviet Union. When in at that time Czechoslovakian parliament was raised the question of the party allegiance to Russia, the communist deputy Klement Gottwald explained the relation: "Yes, we visit Moscow; we go there to learn how to hang you." In 1948 after the communist putsch he would become president of the country whose government he had threaten with death. He had honor to die at the same time as Stalin. Or there is a more precise qualification aimed on the West: "We will hang you and you will hand us the rope." To some extent amusing was the resolution of a guard in maximum security: "One day I will march on New York Broadway. " Here the question is in which fog he had learned that a Broadway existed and that it was located in New York beside in hundreds of American cities with population from two hundred up. The International was dissolved in 1943 after pressure from Soviet war allies, namely Britain and the United States.

Sometime after the eruption of Spanish war Communist Internationale decided to help Spanish communists, for the purpose glamorously baptized to "republicans" which sounded more democratic, against generals Mola and Franco. In Paris , under leadership of Thorez and Togliatti was established a committee helping volunteers to get to Spain. Communists maintain that the interbrigade consisted of 60.000 men from 17 countries. As for countries, among the 17 are countries whose party might have managed to send a token number of ten or twenty. Surprisingly, many of the volunteers were masons. Many of the interbrigade soldiers were from Canada and USA. Americans were organized in Lincoln Brigade, Germans in Thalman Brigade named after imprisoned leader of the German party and others named after prominent leaders.

The most influential men of Interbrigade were commissars. They served the same purpose as the politruks in Red Army with all rights but not responsibility. Generals could be demoted but commissars were only transferred to other units. The first top commissar was Giuseppe di Vittorio/Nicoletti/, the most bloodthirsty Hungarian Erno Gero better known as "butcher of Barcelona". The culmination of his career came in so called "Barcelona May Days". Between May 3, and May 5, 1937 Stalinists were fighting anarchists and their allies POUM, Partido Obrero de Unification Marxista-Workers Party of Marxist Unification. POUM fundamentally opposed Moscow communism and Russian leadership of the war against Republicans. It was basically a Trockist branch allied with anarchist. In any case there was little difference between them and Moscow communist; maybe POUM was worse, In the end POUM was brutally liquidated, its head Andreu Nin Y Perez arrested and most probably murdered.

There is well founded suspicion that after some battles more volunteers were shot on Gero's orders than had been killed during the fighting. The charge was uniformly cowardice, the term in itself one of the most open to different explanation. It is cowardice to lay down weapon when the odds are 100 to 1? Were the French of Polish cowards when abandoning their indefensible capitals or Germans when capitulating in Stalingrad; certainly, it is loathsome to maintain that courage is "treasonable behaviour" or to teach children that there is nothing wrong with being scared, but there are circumstances that the only way is to run or give up. "Irresonable behaviour" created the United States and won the two world wars. How will react American soldiers fighting Taliban when the commanding officer would recommend them be afraid? In 1956 during the revolution in Hungary Dr. Gero was named head of the revolutionary government that was fighting Russians and he was as red as a lobster; the Hungarians were puzzled that the most hated politician could lead the government. I predicted he would not last twenty-four hours; he did not. It was his political end.

The elite of communist party either worked in Paris smuggling volunteers to Spain or directly in Interbrigade, mostly as generals and commissars. One of the first commissars was French sadist Andre Marty whom in cruelty bested only Gero; Karol Svierczevski/Walter/ who in 1947 as general in the Polish army was assassinated by enemy of the regime or for foggy reasons by the regime. His death led to a curious development; In order to deal with anticommunist partisans who were suspected of Swierczewski's death the minister of interior security was named Soviet marshal Rokossovski, born in Warsaw, but whole his life he was living in Russia as career officer and did not speak Polish. He remained in his post years after the partisans were eliminated. Among prominent involved in the Interbrigade were current or future communist or socialist nobility Hungarian minister of interior Laszlo Rajk, later executed by his comrades, and still later rehabilitated and honestly reburied in mass manifestation of silliness by the new regime that thought that by having been hanged, all his crimes were expiated; nevertheless, even with the progress of medicine, it is nearly impossible to resuscitate the victims of Rajk's victims; now, when he is one of them, he certainly tried; Willly Brand, socialist chancellor of Germany 1969-1974 and Nobel Prize laureate 1974 whose post-war attitudes were much more acceptable than his teenage radicalism and to rank him with Arafat or Rigoberta Menchu Tum gives him bad name. Among the intellectuals was Nordhal Grieg, Norwegian poet and writer, relative of Edvard Grieg, the composer of Peer Gynt and thus of Solveig Song who was killed over Berlin when his Lancaster was shot down before Christmass 1943: George Orwell: Ferenc Munich, a commissar and future president of Hungary: Mehmet Shehu, mass murderer and future Albanian Prime minister, minister of Interior, war Minister and Chief of Staff. On December 17, 1981 he either committed suicide or was killed; Heinrich Beimler, former communist deputy in Reichstag, who strangled a concentration camp guard and escaped in his uniform. As a commissar, he was killed in Barcelona, or according to grapevine like Mehmet Shehu he was had help in his death. There were two Hungarian generals, Janos Galics/Gal/ and Zalka Lukacs/Bela Frankel/. From Russian volunteers the highest rank reached member of Soviet Military Intelligence Emilio Kleber/Manfred Stern plus two other names of Stern with different first names/. It was never explained by neither by him nor anybody else why he had chosen Napoleon's marshal name for his cover name; the closest suggestion would be he liked the marshal or less acceptable yet more probable case of megalomania. Largo Caballero named Kleber general. He was recalled to Moscow in 1939, sentenced to 15 years in prison and died in his fifteenth year in Siberia, but he would not have been allowed to return from Siberia. After expiration of sentence, the convicts had to stay as free settlers for the rest of their life. Only prisoners with short sentences were allowed to serve it in prison in continental Russia and at the end of the term were permitted to go home. Josip Broz Tito was active in organizing the Interbrigade in Paris, but there is evidence that few times he travelled to Spain. None of the most internationally known leaders of European communist Parties/not counting Soviet, fought in Spain; neither Thorez, nor Togliatti, nor Tito. The last can be excused since before the war Tito was only Josip Broz and not of big stature. But the other two deserve more credit for being in Paris than in Teruel . Their organization of the Interbrigade was perfect. Without Thorez and Togliatti the Interbrigade would never exist or if, then like a group of adventurers and worse. There is some doubt about Thorez whose instruction to French party gave impression he was in France while in fact part of the time he was living in Soviet Union. Commander of the Thalman Battalion was Richard Stammer/General Hoffmann/. He was suspected of several murders in Spain. Commissar of Thalman battalion was Heinrich Rau. Interbrigade is generally considered a communist enterprise, but reading lists of volunteers casts doubt on this notion. Orwell of Hemingway supported Interbrigade and certainly were not communists, nor were too many communists among Americans. It is important to ascertain against whom the action is aimed, but not less important is to know for whose benefit it is taken. Czech poet said: "For everything is possible to fight, but not for everything is necessary to die". Socialist propaganda machine overwhelmed the world with simplifying the Spanish issue to a dilemma: black or white, democracy or dictature. Russian involvement should have been an indicator of truth; Soviet Union would never support democracy. The Ribbentrop pact with Stalin opened many eyes, yet at that time Madrid was in Franco's hands. Volunteers believed they were saving Spain from dictature; no one asked about the alternative to Franco. The republicans were further from democracy than Franco or Mola. Had they won the war Spain would have become more than later Finland; Madrid would turn to Havana or maybe Soviet  Republic of Hungary. Only Germany and Italy saw around the corner. There is no doubt neither of them intended to make Spain after their model, but could not allow to have one Autostrada away communist regime. Like U.S. is not happy with Castro whose support brought Chavez, Morales and other socialist leaders to power too few freeways from us, so neither Germany nor Italy could afford to have base of communist propaganda next door. Legitimate question is which country would have been so foolish as to choose communism; Czechoslovakia, Hungary-any East European country. Who would have expected few years before the civil war that the traditional monarchy would have approach so close to communism; who expected that Castro would turn communist? Who expected revolution in France? Did ever occurred to the King that colonies would rise against the Crown? Did Kerensky believe that Matyuska Rossija would change the color to red? Who in the world would have warned Hungary in WWI that after 1000 years they will lose Slovakia, the Felvidek which they were determined to Magyarize as soon as possible History is full of roulettes.  Franco disappointed the liberal world when he refused Hitler's request for participation in attack against Russia. He took away from them the eternal annoying axiom "I told you so". Had Franco lost the civil war and republican government were established, it would have been a communist government. Two years after fall of Madrid Germany invaded Russia. The politically mischievous question is whether the "democratic" Spain would refuse participation as fascist general did. Although all commissars and officers of Interbrigade were communist, many were idealists who believed Nationalists were inherently bad and that by fighting against them they were helping good cause. So did Girondins and they were first to go: Robespierre was too romantic for politic of violence and Thermidor storm caught with him. Remember Paul Vergniaud analogy of Saturn: "Citoyens, il est craindre que la Revolution,comme Saturn ne devore successivement tous ses enfants..."- "Citizens, we have reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, will successively devore all its children..."

 Maybe best known of Interbrigade general was Enrique Lister; he was also general of Yugoslav partisan army and Red Army. During the WWII he took part of successful attempt by Soviets to break the blockade of Leningrad.

The insistent question is whether Interbrigade was a purely communist enterprise and an unavoidable answer is a categorical no. George Orvell had no one cell of communism in his character although he risked his comfortable life for communist goal nor was Ernest Hemmingway communist although he worked for the same goal. Majority of Lincoln Brigade were not communists-at that time besides Paul Robeson there were shamelessly few communist in our country. Most volunteers were victims of masterfull worldwide propaganda against Franco; they knew against whom they were fighting without knowing for whom they were fighting. Let us presume Republicans would have one and we need not go further to find out what regime would have ruled in the country: Cuba, Chavez, Morales and others come to mind. In case of Nationalists' victory there was no danger of King Alfonso's return from  the exile in Prague, a  favored bugaboo of communists; it took decades till the monarchy was restored; it is dangerous to maintain that Spain was lucky Republicans lost, but they are still people who believed the earth  is flat and  that Armstrong never set his foot on moon.

Although all generals and more important, the all commissars were communists Interbrigade was under communists' fist, but not communist; and if it were close, beasts like Marty and Gero took care by their execution orders to extend the distance between communists and the idealists. It does not matter if they put the faces of criminals from Spain on post stamps and presidents in long speeches celebrate Teruel or Toledo, Barcelona or Madrid, if the master sculptors create their sculptures from Carrara marble, and if, than only their hearts and souls, if any.

"The doctors killed Garfield; I just shot him."

Gavrilo Princip at the age of 19 did what no one before or after him did, and presumably  never will. He started a war. Not some local, tribal or civil war, but world war that would involve all Powers and many small countries. His seven bullets were followed by billions projectiles from handbags size guns to Big Bertha, a 420 mm monster  named after Alfred Krupp's wife that after 200 soldiers worked for six hours to assembly it could fire 2000 pounds shell over nine miles distance over the Belgian meadows: but it was not necessary for long; with some help of Czech Skoda field guns Bertha destroyed in less than four days 15 indestructible fortresses built with the best technology around Liege. The sound of Princip's gun was followed by the deafening sound of field guns and bombs and silent like death Mark IV 21 6.9 long torpedoes  racing with their 235 kg TNT warhead at the speed of 46 miles per cruel hour from distance of 12 kilometres over the blue, innocent waves of the sea towards its target, be it a cruiser or a civilian liner full of people living for few more minutes; sometimes it was Lusitania with 1195 and sometimes Antilles with 67; in this case the waves turned carmine yet still retained their innocence.

The weak sound of Gavrilo Princip's Browning that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Duchess of Hohenberg  magnified to destructive echo would wander across Europe battlefields for four years with increasing strenght. It would visit Galicia, two deadlocked  Marne battles resulting in stalemate, Verdun where the ground was covered by three feet of martial steel, Dolomites, Po, Tannenberg massacre, battles on rivers, battles  on riverine areas without usual fishermen, two battles of Masurian Lake, and one battle on Lake Naruch and other cemeteries on ground, in the air and in the sea.   In the air it reached only few hundred feet, but this deficiency was removed in the next war prepared without assassination, but with casual ultimata the were becoming a routine, by Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and to lesser extent by Wilson and Russians, whoever was there in power in particular era.

Anyway, at that time the generation of' Kursk, Stalingrad, Ardenes, Dresden, El Alamein, Berlin, massacre of Stalingrad, Normandy with Caen, Bremen,the  former city and Bremen,the former battleship, both eliminated in the Stratego game, Hood, Arizona, Flying Fortresses,Coventry and Alcazar had the diapers changed  in the gynecological wards.

 Rest now and then you can continue to read. The  assassin escaped the death penalty by twenty seven days.  It was never determined with certainty whether Princip had been born on July 25 or on June 8 1894 and the court gave him properly the benefit of doubt accepting July 25 as the day of his birth., He and two of his accomplices would die from  the seasonal tuberculosis before the war was over. He died in military prison in Terezin in  today's Czech Republic not far from Prague. Princip did not survived the war he had opened.  In time of his death few months before the end of the war he weighted 40 kilograms. His arm was amputated when the disease reached the arm bone.  Two of his accomplices, Nedjelko Cabrinovic, 21 and Trifun Grabez , 23 died also before the end of the war, Trifko Grabez only nine month before the hostilities ended. Five of twenty-five defendants were sentence to death; two of them were reprieved; nine were acquitted, the rest got terms between life and three years.


Three weeks after the assassination Austrian envoy Count Giesl von Gieslingen delivered to Serbian Kingdom  an ultimatum  containing in ten points brazen demands. Some of them were unbelievable. Austria-Hungary requested arrest of several Serbians and provided their names: In other article the King was asked to relieve from duty all officers who expressed contempt for Austria-Hungary, which meant majority of the corps, and added other demands encroaching on Serbia sovereignty. Article six asked that Emperor Franz Joseph's I police agents be allowed to actively participate in investigation of the assassination and all activities aimed against the Habsburg monarchy which presumed the Austrian security personnel enters King Petar's I  Kingdom territory. Any government that protects its citizens, and all do, cannot accept such condition without giving his authority over the country: no crime, even assassination allow for usurpation of the sovereignty. What Hofburg  asked was assent to a mini occupation of a sovereign country.

Austria-Hungary had unsettled accounts with her neighbour and the provocative tone of the  ultimatum seems to indicate that Vienna was using   the Sarajevo murders to solve her problems with Serbian Kingdom for good. Hofburg diplomacy was delicate, competing with that of France, and more graceful-if international politics deserves the word-than German of British. Children and grandchildren of Metternich could not have forgotten his charm as Bismarck's inheritors could not forget his lack of...of... Austria must have been aware of the anger the ultimatum will evoke, and was prepared to welcome Serbian outrage.

Austria did not demanded an apology, extradition of the assassins nor compensation. They were minor issues that could be easily agreed to but the Imperium desired the ultimatum to be refused.
Serbia could not reject the insolent ultimatum as would have been proper nor could she answer in the same tone since the subject of the notes was a heinous crime and any negligent word or phrase would have been explained in terms of approval of murders.  Other question is whether Serbia would satisfy the conditions since some of the requests were unacceptable.

The color of the Kingdom's answer was subdued and on some points obsequious; an example is Serbian government's compliance with  it reminded of confrontation between first-grader and principal after the former had spilled ink on teacher's chair. Serbia practically accepted eight of ten articles, asked for evidence on one, and as expected, rejected the sixth point, the demand for allowing Austrian Detectives to question the suspects which demanded the suspect be interrogated by Imperial Police agents, since the granting the demand would violate the Constitution of the Serbian Kingdom.

 In the ultimatum the empire demanded dissolving of patriotic organization Narodna Obdrana and others with similar programs. The Kingdom stressed "The  Serbian government possessed no proof..."that the Narodna Obdrana and other similar societies have committed up to the present any criminal act of this nature...", but dissolved them anyway. In the article ten Royal government suggested that if the Imperial government finds the answer unsatisfactory, in order to preserve peace the proper step would be to refer the case to ... the International Tribunal in Hague or to the great Powers..."  

 

 That was all Austro-Hungarian Empire needed to trigger the war melody and Hofburg satisfied the need thirty days after the successor to the Habsburgs' hereditary throne died in Serbia's capital, on July twenty-eight;  that summer morning Austro-Hungarian troops responded in force by crossing the border fulfilling her  promise to their ebullient nations.             

 

An academic and unanswerable question is what would have happened had Gavrilo Princip missed. There are several variants.

 

1. He misses both

2. He misses the Duchess of Hohenberg but kills Franz Ferdinand

3. He kills Ferdinand, but misses the Duchess Sophie.

3. He wounds both, but the Archduke dies later while Sophie survives

4. He wounds both, but Sophie dies later while Ferdinand survives

5. He wounds both, but both die later

6. He wounds both, and both recover

7. He kills Ferdinand, wounds his wife who dies later

8. He kills Sophie, wounds her husband who dies later

 

Had there been only one person, there would be only five questions: was the victim killed, did the assassin missed him, was he wounded, did he died later or did he recover. The morbid problem can be complicated by impossibility to ascertain how long when injured the, victim or victims would have survived. In all scenarios where the Archduke dies, the ultimatum would have probably the same character or could be the same to the word: as identical as the resulting war. Had he been wounded and die shortly, the sharply worded diplomatic demarche that had been prepared for this outcome since the day of the attempt would follow and result in war. Had he linger like President Garfield who after being shot lived for seventy-nine days and died since the doctors never heard of Ignaz Semmelweis: Garfield assassin said: "The doctors killed Garfield; I just shot him." So had the successor to the throne survived  for longer time Austria-Hungary would surely send a sharply worded diplomatic note maybe faster than the original ultimatum: after his death the note prepared  "just in case" long time ago would have lead to war.

 

Had the Duchess been assassinated it is doubtful her death would have warranted an explosive correspondence, and had she been injured, whether surviving or dying, the Imperial Government action would have been calculated discreetly. Nevertheless, if the radicals prevailed, the war might have started even when the bullets missed both. It is case for a seer; it is impossible to guess what perhaps did not know neither the Emperor nor members of his government.

Gavrilo Princip by precise aiming removed the necessity to speculate what might have been if his victims had more luck.

 

EXTRAJUDICIAL ACTIONS

Politicians and journalists must have consult several philologists to find an acceptable expression to describe the elimination of Osama Bin Laden. The word "extra" was unavoidable; it would serve as a buffer, a cushion; the second part of the definition, would be a multiple choice, like, according of us, the incorrigible sinners, are Ten Commandments. It could have been "extralegal" or "extraordinary" as well, but the latter has bad name; "Cherezvichaynaia Komissia," The "Extraordinary Commission" was responsible for millions of death at the beginning of the Soviet Revolution. There was not due process, no trials, no judges, only movement of little finger. As Dzershinski was not better than Yezhov so Cheka was not worse than Narodni Komitet Vnuternikh Dyel, People's Committee of Internal Affairs. Obama would have been found guilty by the most generous courts like the Ninth Circuit Court and the uncompromising advocate of guilty as well as non guilty victims, ACLU. However, law is neither lottery nor palm reading, it is not based on probability of evidence; only proper court has authority to decide on guilt. On the surface Osama's death can be considered against law, but considering his past, the violation of law was justified. A comparable case occurred in 1962. On May 11 Adolf Eichman, member of German elite during WWII and accused of war crimes was captured in Argentina where he was living many years. Mossad agents gave him choice of suicide or trial in Israel since most of his victims were Jews. He chose the trial. Drugged and dressed in steward's uniform as to appear drunk Airline employee he was placed on El Bristol Britannia flight from Buenos Aires to safe Dakar and from there to Israel where he landed on May 21. It is historical irony that the plane that carried him was the same in which flew Israeli Foreign secretary Aba Eban to Buenos Aires few days before for official visit. Adolf Eichmann was tried, find guilty, and sentenced to death. He was hanged on May 31 1962 in Ramla prison; it was the only civil executi0n in Israel. In 2006 CIA revealed that it had received from Bundesnachrichtendienst-Federal Intelligence Organization reliable information about Eichmann, but the Jewish state ignored BND. Jewish state did not attempted his capture although it had learned such details about Eichmann as that he was using name Clemens and was living on Garibaldi street in Buenos Aires It seems that due to the close relation between Germany and Israel, the later did not want to risk loss of German economical aid. There was another complication. Hans Josef Maria Globke, an important high official in Germany was accused of National Socialist past during the Third Reich. During Hitler regime he produced legal commentaries and contributed to the emergency legislation that formulated one article of Nuremburg Laws. Globke, however, had a powerful defensive argument: he was refused membership in Nazional Socialistische Arbeiter Party personally by Martin Bormann, head of Party chancellery and private secretary to the Fuhrer: after Rudolf Hess escape, he was the second man in Germany outranking Dr. Goebbels and Goering. The reason of resentment of Globke was his close association with the pro catholic, conservative Centrist Party which was dissolved in consequence of concordat concluded in 1933 between Vatican and Germany. The whole operation was led by the Mossad chief Isser Harel /born Halperin/ and thirty agents took part in the action. He had only one boss, the Prime minister, and to him he reported:" I have a gift for you. Eichmann is here. Among his achievements is acquiring of the text of Khrushchev secret speech in 1956 when he denounced Stalin as criminal. East European Communist parties were provided with the transcripts of the speech and Viktor Grayewski, a Polish communist journalist of Jewish background smuggled the copy to Harel. Harel later tried to turn Israel against Egypt by presenting doubtful evidence of Egypt building rockets, but Israel needed his neighbor as buffer against Arab countries and Ben Gurion forced him to resign. To his fall probably contributed his spying on both, left as well as right Israeli politicians; only triple agents are hated more than double agents. In doubtful diplomatic step president Frondizi wrote a personal letter to Ben Gurion requesting requesting Eichmann's return within seven days: only then Argentina will consider eventual Israeli request for extradition. He called the kidnapping an " illicit act committed in the eyes of the world in violation of one of the most fundamental rights of the Argentine state He recalled the country ambassador for consultation. Argentina government threatened to present the case to United Nation Organization where Latin American and third world countries would most likely turn against Israel. Initially Israel denied any involvement in the action; later Ben Gurion insisted the kidnapping was committed by volunteers without government knowledge. Finally, he had to admit that Eichmann was captured by Mossad. Nevertheless, there was no possibility to send him back. The hatred of him prevented any thoughts of sending back. Such step would mean a revolution. According to international law the abduction was illegal; the security forces of another country violated the sovereignty of another state, moreover, a member of UNO and forcefully and against his will and without permission seized a resident of this country and removed him to another country. At this point Israeli government tried a weak argument that Eichman was not seized by coercion since he agreed to face the trial in Israel; even in Israeli court such evidence would appear ridiculous and the argument was never considered seriously. Whether he was given choice between trial and suicide was never proved, but even if it was and he agreed to face the court, his consent was result of his attempt to avoid death and as such cannot be considered voluntary. With prosecution enormous amount of evidence and numerous witnesses the defense had only two avenues open: ask for lenience in form of prison term instead of capital punishment and on formality: the court had no right to try the defendant because he was brought to Israel illegally. According to International law he was de facto in Israel, but de jure in Argentina, and de jure was what counts. Government admits he was brought before it by illegitimate means, consequently the judges are judges de facto without jurisdiction to try the case. Eichmann falls under jurisdiction of Argentina, shortly, he could not be tried in Israel for although he was present physically, legally he was in Argentina. No matter from how many and how heinous crimes he was accused, there were no exceptions to the established law. Argentina is sovereign country, recognized by international community, with inviolable borders, lawful government, and democratic institutions. There is no explanation for the aggression committed against her sovereignty.
There was one. Its author was eight years dead. It might originated by man who never graduated from Law school although he had attended Albany Law School for two or three semesters and his early law career resembles that of Abraham Lincoln. Later their law life differed. Lincoln was elected President of the United States while he became last associate justice of the United States Supreme Court who did not graduate from law school. He was for some time Attorney General of the United States and after the war Chief U.S. prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal. Here Robert H. Jackson faced general Rudenko's request that Katyn strictly off record. It was and remained there more than fifty years and polite people avoid mentioning it still. Rudenko's effort to suppress introducing Katyn massacres is understandable. Russians maintained that the victims had been killed by Germans: then why to protect Germany by not bringing it up? Such poisonous questions were also off the docket. Had the defense proved Soviet guilt the argument based on dying Caesar's lament, "tu quoque, Brute, fili mi" would have weakened the prosecution considerably. In Dachau tribunal the principle "tu quoque", "you too" was accepted as valid defense by colonel Otto Skorzeny when he proved special American details wore German uniforms, and to some extent admiral Doenitz raised the problem in IMT proceedings. Skorzeny was referring to the Operation Greif/griffin/ when during the Battle of Bulge Germans with fluent command of English attempted unsuccessfully disrupt enemy communication, disorient operations, assassinate commanders etc., but were arrested and shot without trial. On smaller scale Greif had been attempted in against Soviets with the same disastrous results. Despite the tribunal's warning issued at the opening of the trial, Admiral Doenitz attempted the tu quoqe defense, but the court categorically stressed it would not tolerate future trespassing upon its ruling. Since that time no one of the defendants would misuse the ruling. Had such defense been accepted, the prosecution might collapse: there would have been less death sentenced and more of the defendants would have gone free. Indiscriminate carpet bombing of residential areas served the purpose of break the will of civilians with Dresden and Hamburg coming to mind, especially the former which was pulverized few weeks before the end of the war. Prosecution would have hard time to explain the raids. Otherwise, there were few instances when Americans and British violated the rules of war; tu quoqe was institutes virtually to protect Soviets. There were numerous cases of killing of prisoners of war; from a hundred thousand Germans who surrendered in Stalingrad ten thousand survived. The incontrovertible evidence of rapine and shooting of civilians encouraged by officers and reminding of ancient custom to leave for few days the victorious army to rob, rape and kill the inhabitants of the conquered city would have implicated Soviets in the public and endangered their domination of Eastern Europe. The defense raised also question of legality of the tribunal. London Charter of the International Military Tribunal on August 8, 1945 stipulated that German and Italian Crimes can be tried. It was necessary for there was no precedent for crimes against peace or for preparation of aggressive war. The defense maintained that some of the countries represented at the trial were not members of international organizations and therefore should not be allowed to participate in the proceedings. Article 6/b/ of the Charter addressed this issue:"If enough countries have signed a treaty and such treaty was in effect for sufficiently long period of time, it can be interpreted as binding to all, not only to the signatories. Not exactly in the spirit of Roman Law, the article is subject to doubts for sixty-six years. Robert Jackson brilliantly analyzed the lack of precedent, nonetheless. He presented a picture of an prehistorical society consisting of bestial, savage individual, ignorant of any rules but rules of muscles, rocks, and clubs, the Hobbes's Leviathan dreadful, wicked unimaginable creature having more animal than human properties:   " Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes" was the general rule. Whoever was able to raise the heaviest stone and throw it farthest had the best chance of survival long before Darwin formulated his views. Then one of the smarter men realized that whoever stole his goat or slayed his uncle should be punished not only by him, who had suffered the damage, but the whole community should condemn the perpetrator and help to punish him. Jackson reasoned that one day this rule had to be established. Had the ancient lawmaker consciously considered precedent the violence would have continued ad infinitum, yet once he had had enough and acted, he created precedent. The International Military Tribunal represents the nations that had enough, and cannot wait for any precedent. After Jackson's expose IMT accepted his argument and the defendants were doomed. There were no others procedural doubts raised. Some crimes were so heinous that they cannot be judged by accepted laws. An inadequate comparison would be Jean Jacques Rousseau's -for Marx true, for others silly- postulate:"Le premier, qui ayant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire: "ceci est a moi," et trouva des gens assez simple pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la society civil." "The first person who having fenced a piece of land and said: “this is mine," and found men naive enough to believe him, was the actual founder of civil society. He formed the economical precedent like the ancient established judicial precedent. The Israeli court reasoned that there existed criminals to whom the norms of justice cannot be applied and if the only way to bring them to trial requires violation of law, even International law, so be it: Grotius did not face man like Eichmann. It would be interesting to know whether Israelis were aware of Jackson's analysis or the critical deduction was their own, but both have changed the law like few other jurists did. Among the victims of revolution the majority are innocent men and women, political bystanders; it is safe to estimate that in some larger rebellions ninety per cent of the slain were not guilty of any capital crime, but of any trespass. It does not matter whether sentenced by the Cheka Troikas, the Soviet revolutionary tribunal consisting of three persons, one of them the Cheka member or revolutionary active judge with law degree from Sorbonne. M.J.A. Herman and Fouquier-Tinville have less right to be called judges than Marat to be called martyr. In Germany Roland Freisler and his successor after his death during an air raid, Harry Haffner, the presiding judges of the Volksgerichtshof belong to the same category. The presiding judge of the trial of the King Charles I John Bradshaw must have realized how unpopular the trial and ergo he must have been. Originally, there were 135 people appointed as judges; 68 did not showed up and from the 46 members of the Cromwell's "Rump Parliament" only 26 voted to try the King. Many members of the such spurious trial are lay person who have no comprehension of justice and are unable to try a chicken thief; but are not jury members lay persons also and in some cases do they not decide on the death penalty? It is true, but they are under supervision on the judge, counsels, and the prosecutor: at the conclusion of the trial the judge gives them detailed instruction and explains them what they can and what they cannot consider. They are not independent, or better, independent only to a certain degree determined by the law. One week after the fall of Bastille Duke Louis-Antoine-Henry de Bourbon together with his father and grandfather left France and settled in Ettenheim in neutral Grand Duchy of Baden, close by Rhine. He was descendant of the Bourbon-Conde family. He had not any children and after his death, neither his father nor grandfather had any either. By his violent death in the age of 31 the Conde family disappeared from the aristocratic mosaic. Duc de Enghien was relative of Bourbon Kings, descendant of Louis XIV and cousin of future Louis Philippe I. He was married to Charlotte de Rohan, niece of the cardinal Rohan. He conspired with England against the revolution and later against Napoleon who hated ci-devants no less than Maximillien Robespierre and received reports that dEnghien was heavily involved in a plot to depose him. He felt that "Air is full of daggers"; At another occasion he referred directly to himself:"Am I a dog to be chased in street...while my killers are to be regarded sacrosanct?" On May 11, Talleyrand confidentially warned Baron von Edesheim, the Baden-Baden ambassador to Paris that in few days French forces would invade the German territory, seize and assassinate Duc d'Enghien. The First Consul obtained concrete evidence that Duc had received financial support from England to support the conspiracy of Comte d'Artois, future king Charles, who had completed the plot to murder Napoleon. From the Powers England was most active in actions to remove him; more than Austria whose princess was killed by his predecessors. Prime minister Pitt commented:"What importance can be attached to government that depends on pistol shot?" Chouan refugees in Britain under leader George Cadoudal landed in France in August 1803 followed four months later by General Charles Pichegru group. Napoleon had enough. Here is the short dialog between him and Duke of Parma Marshall Cambareces: "What are you going to do?" asked the Marshall. ”We shall kidnap the Duc d'Enghien and be done with it.  He commanded General Ordener commander of the Imperial guard to bring the Duc d'Enghien to France at all costs. In a simultaneous operation under command of general Caulaincourt the numerous émigrés were expelled from Offenburg. Ordener was joined by general Fririon and general Charlot commanding gendarmerie. They were led by local guide Pfersdorf. D'Enghien was arrested at 5 AM March 14 1804. Three hundred dragons and seven hundred other armed French troops crossed on boats Rhine, entered Ettenheim on the East bank of the river and captured their prey. D'Enghien spent the night of March, 16 in Strasbourg and in the afternoon under name of Plessis with his escort reached the gates of  De La Vilette. He was driven in a coach to Vincennes where the commander was General Anne Jean Savary, a fanatical ally of the First Consul.

He was investigated by major Dautancourt from the gendarmerie. He declared he had no connection neither with D'Artois not Cadoudal. After the interrogation was over he was  brought to one of the largest rooms in Vincennes for the trial. The presiding judge was general Pierre-Augustin Hulin, highly overrated conqueror of the poorly defended Bastille. He was assisted by five colonels as judges: Guiton, Dautancourt, Ravier, Bazancourt, and Rabbe. The Court received instructions from Napoleon what questions to put to the defendant. Again he denied participation in any plot. He explained: "My birth and my opinion will always make me the enemy of your government." He only confessed he had asked  a commission in the British Army.

This was sufficient for having been found guilty.  With trial by jury suspended the law of 25 Brumaire, an III, tit. 5, sect. 1, art. 7, provided that "émigrés who have born arms against France shall be arrested, whether in France or in any hostile or conquered country, and judged within twenty-four hours..."  His sentence copied the law of 25 Brumaire: he was... "The  ci-devant duc d'Enghien, accused of being a party to conspiracies directed against the internal and external security of the republic, will be brought before a military commission composed of seven members, appointed by the governor-general of Paris, Murat, which will meet in Vincennes."


Originally, all judges agreed on imprisonment, but after few hours of deliberation all voted for death penalty. Josephine, the first French empress and her friend Madame Remusat asked Napoleon for mercy, but it was refused. There is some indication a meeting between d 'Enghien and the emperor were suggested, but Savary in order to prevent possible clemency rushed the execution. He told the court: "Messieurs, your job is over, mine begins." At 3 a.m. on 21 March Duc Louis-Antoine-Henry D'Enghien was taken to the Vincennes' moat and shot. The last of the family Conde was gone. In 1816 his body was transferred to the family crypt.

Napoleon apologists blame for the death of the young aristocrat Savary whose guilt is  without doubt while Talleyrand  did not press First Consul sufficiently to commute the sentence.

Napoleon could not avoid the accusations of his full responsibility; he could  not pretend he had no knowledge of a kidnapping that resulted in death: it would have been as ridiculous as  Brigham Young's denial of knowledge of the Mountain Meadow Massacre. When general   Pichegru was found strangled in his cell the First Consul was suspected. Napoleon denied any involvement;  it might have been a suicide although it must be hard ted of the murder for the general recently returned from emigration and was preparing for a person strangle himself.

 Nonetheless, there is a well documented suicide by strangulation on record. Dr. Robert Ley, beside other functions was head of the Todt organization charged with providing labor forces for industry and before the war he had built Autobahn. He was incarcerated in Nuremburg with von Ribbentrop, Marshall Goering, Marshall Keitel, and other defendants and charged with war crimes. On October 24 he was found dead in his cell. He had torn a towel in thin stripes, tied them to the toilet pipe and strangulated himself. He followed his wife, the ballerina Inge who had shot herself on December 1942 after a previous unsuccessful jump from window. She was depressed after giving birth to their third child and sought relieve in drugs and alcohol.


The court had not right to judge a person kidnapped from a sovereign country. The moment the victim had crossed the border to Baden the French jurisdiction over the victim than Napoleon over Saint Peter. Had D'Enghien returned voluntarily he could have been arrested for he had kept his French citizenship, but had he plead allegiance to Baden and gave up French citizenship the question of the legality of the court was doubtful. He was brought to France against will and no matter what law the country passed against the émigrés abroad, they were no valid outside France; how would Paris feel if a foreign country kidnapped their citizen and shot him? That he was present in his country does not change the injustice for he had been brought to  France against his will. Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe (deputy from Meurthein the Corps Legislatif) or Fouche are reported to have said: "C'est pire q'un crime, c'est une faute," "It was worse than crime; it was a blunder" in English. Oui, oui.

The émigrés were as much furious as when King and later Queen were executed. Their anger was increased for here was violated the sovereignty of legal state and thus the international law. After Russian revolution there occurred several kidnapping of émigrés from France, and few murders committed against them; for short time public was excited, the émigrés for longer, but they cannot ask the proper course: to attack Soviet Union. The wars because of an individual victim are not worth it and no one suggested France invades Moscow. War for some general killed in Paris? No?  In WWI millions lost life in war that started after two people had died on the Sarajevo street. It did not resurrected the man and his wife, but it was not its goal; its goal was to prevent in future the constellation that cause the killing of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, which it did not. It appears that the more people die for  someone idea the less sense the war makes. After the war, not only President Wilson believed there will not be any world war again, but even Germany suffered enough to agree. Yet WWII caused his truism "War to end wars" to be radically modified to more probable but no more precise "War to postpone wars."

Between the two wars there occurred numerous international  kidnappings and assassinations, mostly unpunished since they occurred in foreign territory. Notable exception was Nadezhda Plevitskaya, wife of general Skoblin, the Soviet mole in Russian emigrees’ circles in France. She  was agent of NKVD. Her husband who under pretext of meeting two members of German Abwehr delivered  on September 22, 1937 Russian émigré general Miller into the hands of Soviet agents. Miller was smuggled aboard Le Havre, a ship under Soviet flag.

The emigrees entertained some suspicion about Skoblin; Miller left a brief letter suggesting that if he would not return from the conference Skoblin might be responsible. Some sources  exhorted Skoblin guilt by pointing that he would become a Soviet informer only after Miller disappearance. Any doubts about his betrayal were nullified after he fled to Stalin's embassy in Warsaw and from there to Spain, where he ended up in Barcelona at that time in hands of reds who refused French request for extradition.

With enough of evidence against Skoblin's wife, she was sentenced in France to twenty years in prison.

General Miller was brought to Moscow and tortured. On May 25, 1939 he was executed in prison. Copies of letters he was permitted to write while in prison are in the Volkogonov papers at the library of Congress.

General Kutepov, another émigré, was kidnapped in Paris on January 26,1930. He was brought to Russia, brutally interrogated and summary shot. No other information is available. Some sources maintain he died on route and lack of any trace about him supports another rumor that he died during transfer to Moscow. Trip in car trunk was not unknown means of transporting the victims or their body whether American gangsters or same professional from NKVD. General Kutepov might have suffocated or might have  been suffocated by the agents during  torturous interrogation en route. It is long way from  Paris to Moscow and not all NKVD are patient.

It would be cruel irony to say the generals had better luck than Simon Petliura, head of Ukrainian Government between 1918-1920 and prominent politician before the war. He descended from religious family whose two sisters were nuns; after the civil war Petliura emigrated to France. He was active in emigree's organizations; Sholom Schwarzbart, a Jewish anarchist shot him to death in Paris on May 25, 1926. At least he is buried next to his wife and daughter in the Cimitiere du Montparnasse. Russia, France, and later Spain were home to most anarchists. In France was for short time popular Ravachole, sung to tune of Carmagnole. It celebrated the best known anarchist of nineteen century Francois Claudius Koenigstein known   as Ravachol who was guillotined for murder on October 14, 1859.

 We can contribute to their ranks with Haymarket anarchists, Leon Czolgosz who killed President McKinley and was nearly killed by soldiers,  Secret Service agents send when being transferred to Auburn prison by hundreds of people chanting:"Give him to us!" and Emma Goldman who praised his deed. He was the fiftieth person executed in electrical chair.


Although not a kidnapping, his murder completes the picture of dangers the emigrees were exposed to in the relative safety of France which seems to be the favorite country to settle old political accounts; it was in Marseilles that on October 9, 1934 King Alexander I and French Foreign minister Louis  Barthou were killed by émigré from Yugoslavia Vlado Chernozemski who was immediately shot to death by police officers and torn to pieces by the crowd. He was member of Croatian underground society. Thirty-seven years later appeared theory that Barthou was shot by police.

Chernozemski's weapon was 7.65 mm caliber as was the bullet recovered from  the king's  body while bullet that had killed Barthou was 8 mm caliber which was official weapon of  police. At that time forensic ballistic was sufficiently accurate and it must have been due to a gross negligence  that the difference between the bullets was not noticed. Micrometer measurement should show thirty-five differences, but bullets,  are invariably measured also by   by microscope, and France, country of Bertillon figured for long time on the top of  criminalist. It is not only the caliber that is telling. Although comparative microscope would come later, simple microscope must have pointed to lack of any similar surface marks like scratches caused be riffling, hammer, and other parts of the gun. Several policemen were firing simultaneously and it is quite possible that in the confusion one of the security  hit Louis Barthou; from thousand officers in the course of his career one  fires his gun.  The question is why the difference between the bullets was not noticed at the first analysis only when the case became cold and maybe thanks to  some detective's curiosity rather than  reexamination of evidence a crucial fact entered the case. Unless one of the bullets was misplaced in the laboratory or archives the affair hurts criminalities considerably; if a mistake occurs in a celebrity case what about the fate of Francois the thief?

 Another blunder appeared in the form of medical failure to close Barthou's severed humerous artery quickly, before he bled to death, a routine procedure which might have saved foreign minister life. The other bulled was not dangerous , but blood from damaged artery can cause death in minutes depending on the extent of the injury. Providing the help is available the closure of the leak is possible and  it is is reasonable  to assume that medical assistance was not far.  The minister might have die despite the best care, yet medical ethics calls for all possible means to use to prevent death. 1912 Nobel Prize for medicine laureate Dr. Alexis Carrel in his book " L'Homme, Cet Inconnu"- "Man The Unknown" wrote: "Hopeless situations and incurrable disease do not exist." It is not a convincing statement although it has been written by a person who was member of scientific societies in ten countries including Vatican: he was granted honorary doctorate from six universities: Dr. Carrel received decorations from six governments including the Holy See and was Commander in the Legion d'Honneur of France. Nonetheless, his words are applicable to the handling of Louis Barthou.

Under similar circumstances and also with two bullets another politician and one time like Barthou, minister, but minister of Forest and Agriculture was killed in Austrian Chancellery. The building is located in Vienna in  Ballhausplatz
. Dr. Engelbert Dollfuss had studied theology, economy, and law.  His most memorable political success would have been the union of Austria and  Switzerland for which he strived, but prosperous and selfish Swiss categorically rejected his proposal; "selfish" is "patriotic" in political vernacular.

At the time of his death he held the office of the Chancellor.  After having survived an assassination attempt by Rudolf Dertill on October  3, 1933 who was then sentenced to five years of prison, Dr. Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated on July 25, 1934 in Chancellery building in Ballhausplatz in Vienna by Otto Planeta,  police officer accompanied by three other policemen and three soldiers of the Austrian army 89th regiment. Seven assassins would be later executed and the rest sentenced to prison from five years  to life in prison, Otto Planeta, the killer and the action organizer, Franz Holzweber were sentenced to death by judge Johann Lange and on July 31 several hours after the verdict hanged; their relatives request for the bodies was denied and all seven corpses were cremated in Feuer Halle in Simmering
The Bundeskanzler was shot yet probably not fatally; the shots hit  Dr. Dollfuss in the throat, chest and touched the spine; it seems the vital parts of the spine were not affected since otherwise he would have been dead or at least unconscious; the danger consisted in bleeding and he asked for doctor and priest, but his request was brutally denied for several hours until he lost crucial  amount of blood:  their assassins did not care, the only assistance they offered him was some water. Most likely because they became aware of the failure of the coup d'etat that supposed to start with the murder and noticing the masses or army surrounding the chancellery they bandaged the wounds; for Engelbert Dollfuss it was too late. It is impossible to imagine that observing the bleeding the killers did not know he would  die without qualified medical help. It was as if they slayed the Kanzler Dollfuss twice.

His wife Alwina Glienke Dollfuss was in Italy at this time and Benito Mussolini placed at her disposal his personal plane. The head of the Italian government, Benito Mussolini, upon having received the crushing news openly cried as did Dollfuss's deputy and one time minister of interior Ernst Rudiger Camillo von  Stahremberg,  collateral descendant of  Ernst Rudiger von Stahmberg who had fought in the battle of Vienna in 1683.

The subsequent charges did not fail to notice the abominable afternoon in the chancellery  and the bestial attitude of the murderers and had moral courage to sentence seven defendants to death and the rest to terms of five to life in prison; under the Germans threat the verdict required moral courage and the court it had; moral courage is no lesser courage then to be the last man to fall. One was  hanged thirteen days after the murder, six on August  thirteen 1934. Altogether thirteen persons were  charged in the principal trial and numerous in later trials. Within less than four years there will be in Austria quite a few Planetastrassen and Planetagassen which lasted less than seven long years, years longer than centuries
Half a million people attended Dolfuss funeral, the largest assembly of individuals until Pope John Paul II death and funeral. It represented more than eight per cent of Austrian population.

A curiosity: Holy Roman emperor  Joseph II ordered or imperially suggested that the dead have to be buried in body bag instead of caskets. The reason was never satisfactorily explained as was the rescinding of the order.

 Catholic, exemplary true Catholic Austria was furious ; people were aware of his other inexplicable mischief; how in such a religious country would any ruler attack monasteries. To his credit, some of his reforms led Austria to prosperity and progress.

Realizing that some dead are not more dead than others and that there is no imperfect death the Tzar's incomprehensible manifest was rescinded after short time without explanation.

 

Engelbert Dollfuss rests in a small Friedhof Hietzing cemetery in thirteenth district in Vienna between  his wife Alwine/Malvine/, born Glienke and two daughters, Eva and Hannerl. From many consulted sources one noted that Hannerl /probably from  Hannelore/,was born after the funeral of her father. No any other written material mentions this note, but it does not meant it might not be true. Yet it is not.  Several  authors observe that  shortly after Bundeskanzler death on invitation of Rachel Mussolini Dollfulss's children visited her family. It is obviously an error, repeated by other reporters; a photo dated August 2, 1934, shows Ewi and Rudi Dollfuss but not Hannerl playing on beach in Riccione with Romano  and Anna Maria Mussolini. The text says that at that time the kids were not told about their father's murder. The correct interpretation would be that after the assassination the kids really were in Italy, but had travelled there before their father was cut down and not after. It supports the opinion that Hannerl was born after his demise, but there is no proof that she or her brother and sister visited Mussolini's family shortly after July 25. The newborn was too little to travel and after giving birth Frau Malvine  was too weak to take trips; moreover, she had just returned for the funeral to  Vienna. Summarizing, Hannerl was born posthumously, but did not visit Italy.The two other children went to Italy but before the slaying and on July 25 were still there.

 

 On a picture of their grave the date of Hannerl's birth and death is indecipherable to the extent that from criminalities point it can not be considered more than a guess.  At least one of the numbers indicating date of birth should be three/1934 or 1934/; from the study of the picture cannot be determined neither date of birth nor death of either of the children.

 

Just in time to escape the 13. March 1938 occupation of Austria, Frau Malvine Dollfuss with children managed to get in Switzerland. She survived her spouse by thirty nine years. Her husband's successor Bundeskanzler Kurt von Schussnig did not and spent the whole war in a camp. After liberation he would write a moving book "Austrian Requiem". For nearly nineteen years he was teaching political science at the Saint Louis University.

 Benito Mussolini unlike most  other heads of government he was multilingual, a fact well known; he did not have difficulty to converse fluently with both, Dr. Engelbert Dollfuss and his spouse.
  He had faculty for languages; When in Switzerland he was working very hard and for most of the time manually, but in his free time he studied German and learned  French so he could communicate with Frau Dollfuss and the children without embarrassing presence of an interpreter, no matter how reliable; some of them cannot resist to share confidential knowledge with others.


 Paul Schmidt who wrote  "An extra on diplomatic stage" and spoke eight languages  was a doyen of them; never revealed what he learned during his twenty-one year long career interrupted only be the end of war. Most probably he remained discreet in his book, too. He was interpreting at the Locarno Treaty negotiation, at the Munich the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia he was translating Eduard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain's fruitless pleading with Adolf Hitler and all German Fuhrer's international conferences; naturally, he mentions both events, yet if he tells everything is a legitimate question.

 Another German, general Krebs delivered after Hitler's suicide kind of offer to Soviet marshal Chuikov and talked to him in Russian he had learned during his three years as attaché at the German Embassy in Soviet Union. How impressed Chuikov was can be judged from his effort to meet after few days Krebs again; during his stay in Moscow as military attaché he came in the contact with many Soviet officers who would show him some respect after German surrender, nevertheless, certainly it was his surprising knowledge of the enemy's language that might have arouse sympathy of the enemy.

 

ATONEMENT-

Not only the dead but also the living lie

 But set the sinners in order of importance;

 The mimes, the cravens, the clowns.

While a master can wait  for the Last Judgment,

 My rights were muzzled prematurely and with deliberation

I, not fate will choose the time to retaliate

 And call it atonement like my executioners

Called my annihilation rectitude.

 If  man breaks outside his heart

It is hard to obliterate  him in entirety,

For though he is neither steel nor granite

He can salvage the essential ashes of his intellect.

 I have broken out of myself

 How can i miss my targeted villains

 And  how can my gravediggers avoid my sword?

 From many options of revenge 

My heart conjured grace,

While my brain countered with ferocity;

 Have I had burned but once and in human blaze I  would abide to the heart

Because even if the heart is human

It was inadequate to make the blaze human

Or shorten the tongues of the fire;

The brain  was alma mater of my condemnation;

 One of these midnights I will judge,

 Not afraid I will be judged.

 I can not masquerade a seraph vouchsafing quarter

 Nor even impersonate neutrality;

 My verdict is immaculate revenge That will glue the soot of my incinerated mind together

 And diffuse my grave's memory and ruins

 Over the prostrate ensign of my victims

Like ashes over one of the five oceans. 

SAND CASTLES

Once more to agonize the first day in the school

To lose the duel with the long words spelling
When fear of numbers tortured the nibbled pencil.
 In the dungeon of the first form
Letters are an enemy in disguise,
And when we, the children, overmaster the alphabet,
 Still not aware of dactyls, chalk maudlin runes
 Smuggled to girl-poets who with more pathos
Are composing better lyric sonnets,
 Yet we still build sandcastles;
When erection of the palaces by the river banks
Becomes a struggle instead of ecstasy,
It is the midnight hour
 To write poems, to trust the teachers,
 And to wreck our sand fortification;
 In the duplictious territory of the world
 Poesy is bedridden suffering from dehydration,
 And abandoned to die die it will,
 For doctors who could save it
 Elect to perish by ignorance
 Rather then live by knowledge,
 For is not such demise without art
An article of an involuntary suicide ?
 The same anarchic time that nullified the octavos
 Displaced the teachers and procreated professors
 Who unlike the doctors did not kill themselves,
 But their intellectual arsenic killed
Those poets who eluded the posse of the doctors In their sand garrisons
 Or were resurrected by their elegies.
 The third time the chronograph beat,
 It was for the funeral parade
And Requiem for the architects of the castles
 To whose citadels the new generation of erectors
 Laid siege, tore their white flag and exulted
 Among the ruins of the stronghold.
 Now all, the poets and poems,
Creators and creations, Teachers and professors
- Who, what or where they may be now,
What ,why, and where they write, construct or teach?
 If there is not antiphon to our agnosticism,
It is too late to consider Snow White,
 And if the childhood midnight
Is not born in the same time like that of an adult
Then the midnight of the dead
Cannot exist in the same time either.
 Like the midnight of the living.
Nevertheless the children are alive
Or want to be.
Then what is late for Goldilocks is never for children
 Unknown to the storyteller.
On the part of the educators It was precarious to let the pupils
Build the forts before the midnight's advance
 And bypass the grammar
While hoping that if expedient
 The future can bribe the time. Infancy does not know how to be young
 It is the directors of childhood
 Who counterfeit the epochs;
Embalm the fragments of purity.
 In the mind of a boy
Someone manipulates his toy soldiers
 Against cordial enemy monarchs
While in the adult mind something
 Manoeuvres our weapons
 To the indefensible lecture amphitheaters

 To mummify the dogmas.

ANGEL OF ASSASSINS: CHARLOTTE CORDAY

Fate merchants from Paris sewers,

Creme de la creme of canaille,

Aristocrats of la Grande Cloaque Usurped our hope

And with queer odds bet it against French nation.

 With cardinal points slanting

Away from the freedom map,

 Lost the Fatherland in cards

 Marked by secret republican signs.

The same barbaric gamblers

Spewed by their indigenous lair

Stoned me down from my elemental hearth;

Let the Prophets believe they ensnared

 Also my ancestral feelings, Let the mobocrats hypothesize

 The present odium arrogated my hereditary honor

 And shortened the thousand years of French glory,

 As if her history started with Marat's birth,

 Continued with the capitulation

Of several invalids in Bastille

 Whilst January metamorphosed to Nivose.

He was born as kind of reality

With man's external marks

 By Nature's sinister aberration

 As placebo in its comparative experiment.

He has lived like a designated animal

And died under my knife,

Victim of his birth, life and death aggregated,

With animal endowment regnant.

 It is potentially easy to play with ideas

 But not like with marionettes;

 Rather like with a keg of gunpowder,

 Because like powder, the doctrines

 Might suddenly explode manifesting prejudice

 In hubris or an error

And without motive; action without motive

 Like reaction to nothing,

Like an end without beginning

Has horrible consequences.

Without rational genesis

Chain of ideology corrodes into a circle

Where any link can pretend to be the origin;

Nevertheless, none concedes to be the terminal

From which few guesses escape,

 But no idea can filter in.

 If the thoughts revolt in pride

 The winners might suffer from blasphemy,

 But vanish by misinterpreting dialectic for logic;

 If in a blunder then men risk humility

 And drown in selfconflagration.

 And this happened.

 Marat did not succumb neither to words,

 Nor to tears, nor to blood, Nec igni nec ferro cedit.

The sightless goddess

 Authorized me to bear witness to our vineyards,

 And I obeyed ; against Xerxes I followed Themistocles.

Marat, the architect of France’s dominating steeples,

 The designer of cemeteries;

I pursued the apostate anchorite

 To his hermitage where he was safe from feelings.

 By my by anger illuminated spleen

 I traced the gamblers' Pontifex;

The goddess guided me to guillotine;

 From each of them cascaded a liquid boulevard to him;

 It was evident: just to follow the carmine surge

To the atelier of of his art.

Like unalterable trajectory of destiny bullet

I was propelled by the headless martyrs

 Holding their heads in front of my eyes and heart.

 Jean-Paul Marat corresponded a quondam man

 Faithful to his indigenous venom Who never can regain his human status.

Anarchy, chaos, terror, abandon, and malice

 Converged upon his visionary savagery.

 In order to slow the sin

 That maturates before the perpetrator

 I had to interrupt the eternity.

 In prerogative regalia

 I introduced to the ad interim dead the permanent humanoid,

 The zookeeper of the Cordellier Club.

Thus our homeland's vineyard spake: "

Classical venom artist, scientific tyrant,

 Shark of dry land;

 In his mind murder was idealistic philosophy,

 Whereas compassion brought him misery

 And if protracted, death to his delusion.

His solitary dread was delirium of normalcy.

 In order to salvage his finger

 Marat kept severing heads;

Hercules in him envied Hydra's many of them,

Vesalius in doctor detested

 They do not grow anon.

Unlike Platonic love there is only real hatred.

 This should be the insanity of the predestined lunatic

Monsieur Marat,

 A negative man, cells minus soul.

 Robespierre proclaimed

 To save hundred thousands He had to execute one.

He did not save one,

 However, massacred the surplus.

Thereupon he obliterated one

 And that one was the King .

 So did I and mine one was the Marat.

I did not need to cover my ears To his call for help

Neither did i shiver nor lost one heartbeat;

 Pitilessly, I was missing Villon with troupe of drummers

 Beating a rambunctious serenade

 Under his den's balcony

 To eulogize the dead of the September Massacres

 And the Reign of Terror.

 The coalition of scum, hypocrites and impostors

 Found Loire deep enough

To accept into its depths

More condemned boats

; An enterprising hunter can always find a way

 To kill more rabbits, wild geese or people

 Because good is never absolute;

The evil is, though.

 Men were not exactly cowards,

 They did not know how to stab

 And thence did not act;

I did not know either how to slay

Yet i knew how to grow to a slayer.

 And that was sufficient.

 When the impetuous time

Will force itself upon them

 It will be late for Robespierre, Danton

 As well as other entrants

 Into their void circus

Like a droopy sentinel

 After overlong hours

On an exposed position

 Cradles his en garde pike

The trembling guillotine

Will nestle my head

 And guide my soul through the incontrovertible exit

To the right of the Creator.

When about to be liberated

 I will pin a sign with my name on my breast

So that the amnesic history men do not forget

 And those who do not forget

 Do not allow the eons to erase

 My numinous nome de guerre Charlotte Corday

 From the docket of the Revolutionary Sacraments Prayer Book,

And do not let neither the Marat's kith and kin

To metamorphose my handwriting on the wall

Into Etruscan hieroglyphics.

 My prohibited tomb will germinate

Deep in the French marrow Fleur-de-luce

That God deigned to sent to King Clovis

For his Sacrament of Baptism.

The cross on my grave

 Will point triumphant crusaders

To the majestic evidence of Jehanne la Pucelle

I will not capitulate to one wavering step,

 No one feminine teardrop will bedew my determination.

 Indoctrinate nurslings

 So that when they grow to manhood

They will inherit me riding my tumbrill

Become masters of Charlotte Corday

 And know who had grown for whose sake and to what,

 Who had paid whose debt,

To whom and in what currency,

 Who will order which psalm to sing,

Who had died for whom.

For whose sin.

 

Friday, May 6, 2011

PRISON LULLABY

If you, like me, have died handcuffed
To a the five-points shaped red star
 Bless the dust of the intersection
 That is missing in surveyor maps or is eradicated
By feet of prisoners, the pilgrims;
 Like I, fall on yours unworthy knees
 Worn by circular marches on the exercise yard,
 And ask for the grace of patience
 Since my lullaby is long;
Yet was not my suffering longer?
 Did they not sentenced me
 To be dropped from the highest mountain
 To the deepest bottom
So that no one is more dead than I?
 And the sentinels are still waiting in lay,
 Now for my heart to break in and wreck its ruins;
 For no man did they wait longer.
 Blindfolded by the false constellation
 I must walk backwards towards myself.
 Since their dilettantes usurped my metaphors I have to begin all over again,
 And never learned who and whose i was
Before the star had begun
To write its own constitutions and poems.
 In one of my categorically last eulogy
 The heir apparent soothsayer
 Harangued my skeleton's identity
 That i was a nobody and nobody's
 While dooming me to life career in mines
Like Christian martyrs in Pheno or Proconesse
 Digging brass and perishing between mandatory quarries jaws
. Once the time corroded by oxygen of years
It will raise its ivory shirt in surrender
 And its prison bars in about-face
 Will burn to charcoal before a cyclone
Spreads them over the ocean
 Like ashes of a cremated cherub.
Yet in their Acropolis the sanscullots in rage
 Together with the last skeptic in philantrophy
 Might to bollix my resurrection: "When there are no prisons
 There is no bread And when there is is no bread the first starved is freedom."
 Howbeit, those who dream rancor
 Do not eat bread: he, who dreams rancor is free.
A tall steeple is being heightened
To set its bells to detonate this hymn
 Then again mortals will recognize me as a prophet
 And twenty-one gun salute
Will ennoble me, the drummer,
 Since I never prayed sitting.

PRAYER AGAINST MARAT

'Shortly after the illiterate earth
 Hides the coffin and grants asylum to the sinner,
Before the bereaved abettors
 Have time to create a majestic sarcophagus
 The elected dead start lying
And we, the absolutely deceased,
 Applaud the lies.
 Citizen Marat, as likely as not a former creature
Was originally an inevitable human,
Lived like an IL-defined animal,
  Ceasing as summary of a stray mongrels
 And something beyond definition of eminent universities
 Must have happened between he was constituted
 In nature's aberration and between the instant
 He was recalled to the inferno by demise
 From thirst for blood in the moral desert,
 The worst of the thirsts in the worst of the deserts.
 It could not be his human propensity;
 For his brain machinery was calibrated to the genuine viciousness.
 The waves of weeping willows silence  the prosecutor's clamor
while the Bishop is chanting "Quem patronum rogaturus?"
 But not this Bishop, not this lament,
And not for this corpse;
 In Saint-Etienne-Du-Mont cemetery
 A tomb gnashes his teeth for absolution.
This death is not catalyst for mercy
 And this grave has not purpose;
 Do not plant there neither wild violets
Nor garden orchids but belladonna lily,
 For neither flower nor a litany of an ancient
Will blunt the edge of the Marat's heart and tongue;
They continue as swords.
God will not forgive you, maudlin widows,
 One stalk of a plant or hay, the food of horses
 That in a stable the menial groom throws to the animals.
Tear the cowl from your face, penitent Carmelite,
 Reflect on prophet Elias,
 How his sapience discomfited
Four hundred and fifty priests of Baal
 On the Mount of Carmel.
Dry your uncalled for tears, misguided pilgrims,
 I am a poet, do not believe a single line of my lyrics,
Yet seek the truth in the stanzas spewed with choler,
Dry your uncalled for tears, misguided women
, Do not waste your human compassion on an animal,
 In lexicons, multilingual dictionaries and concordances
Written by erudite savants I did not find a name that would rhyme
 With the malignity of Marat's creed.
Plotting la Grande Terreur
 He composed a pernicious catalogue of the victims;
But I am calculating , too.
 My syllabus is shorter,
 Notwithstanding, i know it by memory,
With my heart in position, with my brain triggered by the heart
 And his anonymous spirit on the top of  my calendar.
Help me to Baptize him with a befitting anathema.
 Either my or his list is bootless
 Upon his return I will perish,
When I conquer his resurrection will fail
 Because there are few of us to strangle that memory;
 When books' wisdom did not reveal
The matching word for a fiend
And the professors tongues hang in paralysis
 I tried the catacombs of history credible cannibals;
After scrutinizing the vocabulary of Timur the Lame,
 I listened to nations imprecating
 In many tongues Genghis Khan
 And studied the execrate appellations of the Scourge of God.
 Christians were modest in their precis of Nero,
The amateur violinist yet professional like Marat.
 When my drudgery foundered
 In order to find the proper name for an animal
 I turned to the archfiend;
He suggested for the man in the Paris pit mellifluous epithets:
 "Ogre","brute","beast", and "monster" or his own dignified stage name.
In the absolute meaning of iniquity
None of them approaches the meaning of man
 Or shall the juror say "paraman?"?"
 They appear sooner an encomium than damnation;
Proper curse somewhat for Saint-Just, the Lyon cripple Couthon
 Or their Vade mecum, the incurable lupus of France, The humpback Robespierre;
 Only for the September gore
Marat was worth a more miasmatic canonization
And a slow, much slower, yet finally fatal vulgar lupus;
 A classically simple, nearly comfortable murder by knife
 Of such subhuman creature
 Substantiate the existence of the merciful God
 More rationally than Aquinas dogmas
 Or Augustine scholastic proofs.
 I believe and will believe: but, please, my Lord and my God,
I object; I protest against your law;
 Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
 Do not have mercy on him,
 Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
 Do not have mercy on him,
 Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
 Do not grant him peace, Peace everlasting.
 Do not grant eternal peace unto him, O Lord
 And do not let perpetual light shine on him;
May not the ranks of angels receive him,
And with Lazarus, the poor man ,
 May he not have eternal rest.
 Palliate or tolerate my ominous turn into Julian the Apostate;
Catapult me to the Gehenna
 Rather than exculpate this creature depravity. He remonstrated with congenial slayers
Who did not need any instigation,
To be beware of prostituting their incense
 And proclaimed that sundering of five or six hundred heads
Will ensure repose, freedom, and happiness;
 What is the stage name for this thespian?
 The iconoclast whose theology
 Was killing and who mastered  and perfected
The craftsmanship of villainy,
 Has the birthright to an unparalleled malediction.
 There is the primordial privilege
 To kick harder the carcases of the men who initiate carrions
 Than that of average brutes
 And spit on the graves of those
Who cultivated the aesthetic of graves.
 From this mandate justice reads the wisdom
 That beside different gods
 There are the different children of gods,
That besides the law of the gods
 There is the canon of the children
Which does not condone the grace,
While in condemning charity commands vengeance.
 Like benignity belongs to Heavens
 So must the punishment of the secular.
 In this I am with you, Almighty.
 All gods and all Kings Marats had fought
 Obligatory wars against their neighbours;
 All experienced their general Dumouriez;
 All gods, nevertheless, not all Kings
Paraded imperiously through
The Capital of their selected defeats.
 Marat was probably not a king
 And only leftover demigod, a byproduct of creation,
 His existence furnishing an extension of Robespierre,
While his annihilation Robespierre's rigor mortis;
Still he marched; And is marching;
Then against whom, if not against all?
 Neither his Eastern nor Western wickedness has an end;
 Neither his Northern nor Southern cortege
 Advancing on the blind path
 Failed to pause at each charnel house since a guillotine was evermore handy;
 Lutetia's endurance was beyond guillotine
 But not too much.
He never moved from the corpses' focus
 Thus as a corpse he was certified. I
In the cemetery the trees are hymning
Or are they souls moaning? He knows;
Howbeit, anchored to his tombstone,
Marat still hates and will not tell.
 Let us assume they must be souls
 Bayoneted by the trees' agony
Whilst bayoneted France is waiting
 Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, Habsburgs, sovereigns and politicians
 Offer their backs to Paris mob
 Like when they had left purple born Byzantium
Alone in the closing fist of barbarians
to wait  in vain for Europe's wand;
Wands are domain of fairies and fairies are human
While monarchs are warlocks who wave dull swords
And unloaded guns with safety on.
Let us save at least the willows
 Expecting a mistral of prodigious ferocity
To uproot them and drag them
 To the far away barrens
Rather than as sentries dignify the Marat's lair.
 I relinquished my post at the inquest
 At the Chapelle Expiatoire
 Since all my hatred did not match
God's mercy for a real yet nameless sinner.
 Up to this i was with you, Father,
Up to the time he was forgiven

 And I was banished to a vacuum.

POSSIBLY BLOODLESS SUNDAY ‘64

Seven months after the Communist putsch in the former Czechoslovakia, on October 11, I was arrested, and in December sentenced by State Court, an institution created after the takeover, to twenty five years in prison, being tried for political crimes. I had to wait for my bloodless revenge for more than sixty years when, in 2009, I was accepted to

American Mensa after a test where my score was 99 percentiles. It is safe to assume that I am the oldest person in history to qualify for Mensa. Most probably no one in my age range took the Miller Analogies Test; not many candidates reached my score.

What happened during the immensely long night where I never lost my way, friends?

This.

The charges were nothing unusual in Communist justice: espionage, military treason/high treason in American jurisdiction, with penalty reserved for crimes committed during war/, and using documents with a false name. For some time I was Oscar Rosner. In the sentence, the Court noted that the proper verdict should have been capital punishment, but the convenient option was not available obviously because I was not twenty one. Only sixty-two years later I would learn that I was wrong: the legal age for death sentence was 18. I took my few days to recover from my error. The Court had mercy on my dirty soul. I was one of the first cases tried after the putsch when the routine of hanging was not established yet, but later several people younger than me were hanged. Even Soviet Union did not execute youngsters under 21, but no one will teach former Czechoslovakia justice. How many people and how brutally had a nineteen-year-old boy murdered to deserve to stay in prison until he is forty-four?

In June 23, the Western Occupational Zones in Germany realized currency reform, and the next day Russians blockaded land, air, and water access to Berlin. They created a maximum security prison for more than two million people, whoever survived the defeat of the German Reich after unconditional surrender: kids, their grandparents and women. As in France after Napoleonic wars, there were no men in Germany beside in mass graves. Immediately the airlift would begin and soon the unsuspecting Russians were helplessly and furiously watching American transports appearing on horizon and circling Tempelhoff. In the future our Air Force would prove that it can maintain contact and supply any point on the Earth for unlimited time. Limited thinking of Russian strategist slowly realized that Americans were not only able to feed Berlin Burgers but in case of necessity to bring weapons to our forces besieging Magnitogorsk and advancing to Donbas. Even with modern technique there is no other country beside ours that could repeat the feat from 63 years ago.

Nine days later after the Russian nonsense I crossed the border river Morava, passed forty miles in train through the Russian Zone and, early in the morning of July 5 I knocked on the door of the Counter Intelligence Corps office in the American sector in Vienna, which, like Berlin was divided between four powers. Although Austria was first country occupied by Germany, Soviet Union treated it more or less as an enemy. Soon, with false documents I was on my way as a tourist on Uberreise /transfer/ to neutral Switzerland. My documents satisfied the Russian train patrol and near the famous ski-jumping bridge in Bishofshoffen I sneaked to safety of freedom.

I was placed in refugee camp Glasenbach where shortly after the war were interned prominent personalities who fled before the Russian occupation but were accused of cooperation with Germans. At the briefing I attracted attention of CIC officers because of my past. My friend, also a refugee confirmed my statements however unbelievable they seemed to be: for my age I had too many encounters with State Security in former Czechoslovakia: it was enough for a forty years old veteran. It seemed to me that there must have been someone else, also, who gave them more information about my escapades. In order not to seem to be a liar, each testimony was welcomed. I never thought that my age would be such an enemy. In Salzburg, the Mozarstadt I celebrated my twentieth birthday.

I impressed the agents with my knowledge of international politics. I remember we discussed the widening split between Tito and Stalin. We were both wrong-Russia did not attack Yugoslavia. I surprised them with talk about general Jovanovic shot on the border when escaping to Austria, about imprisoned communist leader Hebrang, Greece and ELAS AND ELAM, fighting against the government. I was asked to translate an anti-Communist flier for an organization of Czech refugees, the Free Crusaders. I was asked if I was not afraid to go to Slovakia. The suggestion surprised me, yet I assured the agents that if necessary I will go with pleasure: another pleasure. My mission was supposed to be spreading the Free Crusaders materials, and, as a side job, I should try to organize clandestine groups. I think this was a test to verify whether they could trust me with larger enterprises. The proof of the test was that I was not given any contacts: I had to show whether I could work independently. If I was successful, my next task probably would involve a contact with some organization already operating in the country.

I asked what the group established by me should do.

My operating officer, Stachovski, answered:”Exist. Nothing. Wait.” I must have sounded too enthusiastic, and my somewhat militant past and surely his combat experience as partisan during war helped him to read me thoroughly. He warned me if they have any report of the slightest violence in Slovakia while I am there, I better not come back. He explained me the virtue of patience. He expected as everybody war and promised me lot of shooting action replacing the leaflets. He stressed that with so many unguarded party buildings, Stalin busts, and posters smiling it are hard to resist, but once the war starts I will have combat freedom.

He said:”In fact, the war started in June. There are wars without shouting, but the West has to wait until Russian threats change to action. In the meantime we have to be content with propaganda. I promise you, Rosner, you will not miss anything.”

I did not like to wait Soviets take the first step. Aggressor has the advantage.

He pointed to Japan and Germany in WWII and Austria-Hungary and Germany in WWI.

I could counter with Germany attacking France in 1870, but I liked Stachovski too much to go that far. I did not want to look like a violent hero. I had an impression that he liked to do a clean job. He preferred to be a soldier in a double-breasted worsted suit. Because of my respect for him I kept my uncomfortable views for myself, but I am convinced the aggressor has advantage. Majority of strategist support the French and an outrace-to the utmost. Aggressor is morally condemned, but wars are not fought in ethic classes, although there is some truth in the belief that World War I was won in Eton.

From my statements on file he was aware I was few times in jail and that in Vienna I gave some political information. Beside my friend he probably consulted other refugees who might prove or disprove my activities in Slovakia. The political information I gave in Vienna was insignificant but provided my capability for observation and organization of actions. The actions were my past adventures, rather juvenile adventures without any intelligence value. Again, their value consisted in the fact some of them were undertaken by a seventeen-years old. I remember for many years one axiom: he who in twenties is not a revolutionary is not man. In 1946 when I was 17 the local police learned I had buried a cache of ammunition in our backyard. At that time I was in jail for having sung with my friends anticommunist songs at a dance. I was led with police escort to the cache to dig the ammunition out. Soon my pick hit metal. The officer warned me to be careful: the sound of metal hitting metal was no pleasant. He retreated to a safer distance, angry and scared. All my treasure was without fuses and could explode only in fire. Mostly I dug out the shells for mine throwers. I was afraid the guns might get rusty underground and hid them in a dry attic so they are ready for operation when the war starts and we would fight behind the lines until Americans come. The war was almost reality.

The charges for the illegal concert were dismissed. Our defense that we were singing what the band was playing was true but was meant as ridicule than serious argument. It was idea of my mother. Later I was arrested in connection with an illegal student organization Slovak State Secret Service at the Gymnasium and led by Michal Stifle. I ended with few months of jail which I had served while waiting for the trial.

My third imprisonment was serious. I attempted to escape to Austria and was arrested few yards of the border by waiting border guards. I was not betrayed, though, but someone whom I had told about my plans talked too much. Up today I cannot understand why I choose to cross on land rather than swim in the absolutely save border river which was my playground. I was living less than three miles from it and knew the area thoroughly. Moreover the place was practically unguarded. This adventure created danger for my mother who had given me her savings and the password to withdraw money to finance my start abroad. To protect her in case I was caught we mane arrangement that after few days when I was expected to be safely in Austria she supposed to report me and the missing money to the police. It was precaution in case in few days I would not be in Vienna, but in jail. When police discovered the money, I insisted I took the savings book without my parents’ knowledge. In order to save me from prison my mother was ready to confess which meant she would have been charged as an accessory before the act. The result will be prison for both of us. We were fighting to the end. When the judge asked her whether she gave me the savings book my eyes were pleading with her. She hesitated, but in the end said I took it without her knowledge. Fortunately, neither the investigators nor the judge asked themselves how I could withdraw the money if she did not give me password.

After the release, I came home and enrolled in YMCA night college classes to earn some credit and to satisfy my parents, but I always wanted to study abroad. Five month after my release came the Communist takeover and we are back at the Counter Intelligence Corps entrance.

This was the background that influenced American intelligence. With my perfect credentials and my familiarity with politics, I became the prime candidate for underground work in the Russian sphere. My age spoke against me, but this deficiency was balanced by my adult past. We finalized the details. My operator once again explained my task and gave me address of a contact in the Austrian border town of Marchegg, a railroad man named Lascar who was of Slovak origin. He would assist me to board a freight train and the rest was in my hands. I suggested the river crossing I knew well but Stachovski warned me that the border changed in last months and new fortification were built daily and stressed that I would not recognize the area although I had known it before. He also assured me after my return to Salzburg I would have another and more important mission waiting.

I was curious what the new action will be. Sabotage was out of question. For Americans, sabotage was the last means to reach a goal. It was always risky, even during hostilities, for innocent civilians. When resistance blows a bridge the saboteurs cannot be sure a military transport crashes in the river or one carrying workers returning home from swing shift: and there are much more civilian trains than tank transports. It is possible that during the last war more civilians were killed by violent actions behind the enemy lines than military personnel, and is questionable whether the enemy material loses balance the books. Klak, Lidice, Latakia, Oradour sur Glane and caves on Via Ardetina near Rome come to mind. As for the enemy loses, Heydrich was the highest German authority killed during the war, but was his life worth the lives of hundreds Czechs, not one of them a soldier and only three directly participating in the assassination.

The threat of imminent war created in my action-possessed young mind a thought that enormously differed from spreading the Crusaders leaflets. I do not know whether I was courageous, but Stachovski thought I was and that was what counted. With his thought resolved I would never disappoint the Corps. When I shocked him with my newest adult idea, the experienced intelligence officer who, by my thorough deduction during the war must have worked behind the German lines as partisan leader, the combat veteran looked at me as if I asked for his valet. I was half his age, and familiarity with some subjects placed me ahead of other youngsters, but still, this time he gazed at me and did not know what to think, the less to say.

I suggested creating of network of people in Slovakia who, during the coming war, would help the downed Allied pilots to safety, and, if possible, back to their bases. As colonel Hogan used to say, “It was done before”. At present the cells would sleep, but once the bombers emerged from the clouds, they would be activated and receiving support from resistance groups that would be formed at the beginning of hostilities my network could save the unlucky pilots. During the last war such groups successfully operated in France, Yugoslavia, and some other countries. Maquis in France and Mihajlovich and Tito’s partisans saved numerous fliers. In France the smuggling of the downed pilots was helped by a few hundred SOF/Special Operation Forces/ dropped by the British in France. They smuggled the lucky fliers to Switzerland or Spain. As for Yugoslavia, Randolph Churchill participated in the effort. After I explain all the history of ways to save the pilots and he recovered he asked me: “What will you do with them?” “Send them to their bases. Like the maquis”. “Through Germany or Poland?” I had thought of it. All countries surrounding Slovakia were occupied by Germany or were under Reich influence. At present the closest Western territory was about 130 miles from Slovak capital Bratislava. Providing that the Allies would advance it will be less. “Providing they would retreat, it will be more: maybe 500 miles”, Stachovski countered. I was such a fanatic that I could admit American would give up a square inch, but I did not argue for there is no possibility to lead the men through Austria occupied by Germans no matter whether the Yankees were only few miles from Morava river. The solution was to guide the fliers through acceptable Hungary to Yugoslavia. In Hungary obtained help many refugees from Czechoslovakia before.

Initially, it never occurred to me to participate in the enterprise, but Stachovski suggested I had friends in Slovakia who will trust me rather than a stranger, but I tried to convince him I was too young. Friends from my school would trust me, but not older people. The issue remained unsolved for he told me he has no authority to approve such enterprise and has to consult his superiors. Nevertheless he promised to support my plan with all his heart.

In 1944, I was watching a damaged American Liberator of Flying Fortress, that later would crash near our town, and counted the parachutes bringing the crew down. They should have been nine or ten, but there were only seven descending to Zohor. From the distance I hoped that I was mistaken. I was not, only seven survived. Two were found dead, either the parachute did not open or they were killed before they had had chance to bail and soar with their fellows towards life.

Until the end of the war, the two of them were resting in our graveyard behind the church, only later they were identified and transported to a military cemetery. I have read a copy of an article from their local newspaper about them describing many details from their life in a well written report.

On All Souls Day some of my friends and I decided to keep kind of memorial on the cemetery for them. One of us was an excellent sail plane pilot while I was limited to ground training once the instructor Slamka found out I was not even 15. I bought a representative wreath and after we assembled in the front of the church of Saint Margaret we marched to the grave where we solemnly and reverently placed the wreath, reflected and prayed.

Maybe in the depth of my memories lurked instinctively the two missing parachutes when I stupefied my operating agent with my plan which seemed to be much superficial. It was impossible to plan the details for no one could predict where the front will be in particular time. In 1948 the closest American position from the Slovak most western border was about 200 miles, from the farthest it was more than 450. To all my doubts I found a pragmatic answer: Maquis did not care where the front was.

With Stachovski we frequently discussed Tito's widening split with Russia. He was enthusiastic about the Yugoslav leader, but I believed that in case of the war between West and Soviet Union Tito will fight along Stalin. As for my suggestions he told me his superiors could not approve my plan without Air Force involvement but I saw he was supporting me completely. The landing of a man hanging on a parachute is observed by hundreds and around large cities by thousand eyes among who will be at least one member of the clandestine organization who will bring the pilot to a safe house. I have some questions, but also answer: partisans and Maquis did not care again.

At our last meeting Stachovski mostly repeated earlier instructions. He said that CIC was enthusiastic about the network I had suggested and that after my return from the current mission they will arrange meeting with Air Forces where in my presence we will analyze the plan. I was provided with Czechoslovakian ID bearing name Oscar Rosner which I had memorized some time ago and practiced to the extent that in became an automatic response. I had to forget the name as was bearing for twenty years. He stressed that forgetting own name is more difficult than learning a new one. I would travel from Salzburg through Vienna to Marchegg, an Austrian border town. I had to be careful: from the more than 250 long voyages a substantial part led through the Russian territory. In Marchegg on the rail station we will meet with Lascak, my guide, and probably man connected to the Corps. His strategic position on the border was invaluable, but lethally dangerous because he operated in the Soviet Zone. Any secret agent in field is like a person walking at night through mine infested area, an agent in enemy territory walks the same mine trap but in addition is blindfolded. I had to memorize his name and not to write it down. In the underground all names and addresses have to be memorized: it is better to forget them then to write them down. Stachovski warned me not to try to change names. It would help to remember name Lascak to write down Lancak but there might exist a person of that name who could run into troubles. I asked how many people had he led across the border before. My operator said he cannot reveal any more about him, but told me he was as reliable as I. His name sounded Slavic and Stachovski confirmed he was Slovak. I did not press him more since I could not guarantee how I would resist under eventual torture if arrested. He did not own any allegiance to his original country but courageously worked for her freedom.

I did not need a guide. Marchegg is about four miles from my village Zohor and I was familiar with the area. When I escaped to Austria three months ago a crossed Morava river about three miles from the city. Stachovski asked me to be careful since in these three months the border was armed, towers were built and barbed wiry obstacle was erected. It became truth sometimes later, but now it was still easy to escape to Austria where the problems started for she was occupied by the Red Army. Lascak helped me to climb freight train carrying heavy machinery as part of war reparation and therefore accompanied by Russian soldiers. I hid under the tarp and waited. I was not scarred at all, rather impatient. Lascak returned with a lamp and told me the transport should start the trip to Chop on Russian border shortly. In the meantime I spotted a flashlight, most probably a sentry. At that moment I wished I had chosen to swim across the safe Morava rather.

Finally, the train started slowly moving. Slovakia was one mile away. Train rumbled on a short bridge. The noise it was making on the metal bridge was deafening, the result of metal-on-metal effect. Half way across the bridge I was home. Home? Soon I observed the lights of the station in Devinska Nova Ves, the border town in Slovakia. I had to leave the train before it reached the station. I had no time to think too long. The distance between the town and the bridge is short. It was past midnight and I could not see well. A flashlight would not help since I could not use it. I had to jump blindly. I had experience. For several years I travelled to school by train and never missed to jump from train going faster than this one. Only difficulty was I did not see where I will land. Suddenly, I was on the ground. The momentum carried me a little, but I did not even fall.

I did not risk boarding the train so I walked to visit my mother and father, but we did not wake up my sister and brother. From Zohor I travelled to Bratislava. I was betrayed by two people who were number three and four on my list of potential members of my network. I do not believe I made mistake. I am convinced that during eventual war both would have been happy to risk their lives to help Allies. Before both worked as secretaries of the sworn anti-Communist party. After the war, a successor party with the same ideology was established and both were secretaries again. Where I made a mistake? Nowhere. Their credentials were immaculate. They had known me for some time as I had worked as volunteer for the same party , wrote few articles for their daily, and aspired to become full time employee. After the election in 1946 I received a substantial financial award for singlehandedly bringing Zohor to end up as one of the two communities in Slovakia where the party beat the communist to second place. For these reasons I do not mention their name so that their descendants would not lose some of their respect for them,

At my trial one of them testified that by denouncing me he fulfilled his patriotic duty. It was meant for me to understand under what pressure he was when with his political background he had to switch his allegiance. Once, in a literary work on Robespierre I wrote "How much is possible to betray for a bowl of lentils?"

After having received the call, three agents followed me and fortunately arrested me as amateurs instead of following me, but their first question was professional: “ Do you have a weapon?”, and second when did I come. One of them, Cermak, previously Porges I had known from previous arrests. My first thought was that in arresting my before I had contacted others I saved them from serious troubles. We were on a crowded Bratislava street and the best director of a detective movie could not shot a better scene in the best criminal movie. Cermak knew my passion for weapon collecting and whole my past: he frisked me as much as in a public street was possible and all the time had his hand in his right pocket. Next time I would meet him as fellow prisoner when wave of counter Jewish measures rolled through the State Security organization. I wondered how they knew about me especially that I had come from abroad when besides my mother I had spoken only with two secretaries in the General Secretariat of the Freedom Party.

Two months later I was sentenced to 25 years of prison and transferred to the strictest maximum security prison in former Czechoslovakia. Leopoldov was a seventeen Century fort and was named after Kaiser Leopold. It was never conquered and never besieged. To conquer it was nearly impossible. I was followed by the director of the Bratislava jail Michalik who replaced the Government Counselor, an attorney who was the current director. There was an escape from the massive fort and, as usually, the least responsible official had to go. As an intellectual, the human Counselor did not fit into the working class quilt. During one of my previous arrest Michalik slapped me few minutes after I was brought up to his office from the police, before I was even admitted and registered. In Leopoldov it took a little longer-maybe two days when he for the first time inspected our one hour exercise. Like Cermak and most my enemies, he never forgot me. From hundreds of talking inmates he picked me for punishment. In jail talking during exercise was prohibited so that accomplices could not coordinate their statements before the trial, but in prison it was permitted since all the inmates were already sentenced and it was not expected that they would not speak for twenty-five years and he knew it, but could not find any other pretext: it was hard to see any violation of rules in a simple walk around the yard and I was not doing anything else than the others. If the talking was against the rules, he might as well assign to the “report” four hundred men.

On Friday all reported prisoner were one by one brought to his office and he pronounced his sentence. Two of us ended with the hardest punishment: I and Jozef Kovacic who was with me in Austria, returned as an agent, and testified against me: he did in so skillfully telling stories unbelievable to a degree that the prosecutor must have been sorry to have him call. Michalik knew him also and neither forgot him either. We were sent for a week to the solitary with the dark cell and food every other day. It was an unheard punishment except for an escape attempt. It gave me an opportunity to test my courage or better, my audacity. Kovacic was in nearby cell. Once, returning from a short exercise, passing his cell, I managed an impossible feat. I threw few cigarettes into his cell directly under the eyes of the carefully observing guard. Kovacic insisted I hypnotized the guard for our eyes were locked and I did not move my hand and the cigarettes were hypnotized also for they flew from my hands on own power. It is possible that the guard, knowing how desperate smoker Kovacic was closed both eyes and let me help me. If this happen I am still proud since I could not anticipate the guard’s passivity. He was dangerous because of his talent for choosing for punishment people who deserved it most. He end came as his arrival. There was another escape from the escape proof fortress and he was fired from the prison guard system and sent to civilian life.

The adventure I cherish most is the one when if discovered I would have been beaten to death as if the more dangerous action the more pleasure I had. It is kind of perversity, kind of political masochism. It involved the no less important persons than president of Slovak State during war Monsignor Sr. Jozef Tiso and Minister of Interior Alexander Mach. During my previous arrest I was imprisoned in the juvenal section of the jail that was isolated from the general population. As prominent personalities , both statesmen were isolated together with two brothers, president’s secretaries. The juveniles were assigned to clean their cells when the Monsignor Tiso and Mr. Mach were on exercise yard. Once I wrote to each of them a letter and placed it next to the toiled on the place which was invisible from the door. I remember my typical sentence: “The Slovak youth is behind you.” What was so important in my deed? That no one else did in but me. One of my cellmates told me he had smuggles also a letter to the president while a police officer. I have no reason to doubt his assertion. Without diminishing his courageous act there is one difference. As an officer he had easier access to Dr. Tiso than a prisoner. But he deserves full credit and his merit is equal to that of me.

President was brutally murdered by the Court even before the communist take-over in an act of Shakespearean dimensions: a foul murder. Minister mach was sentenced to life in prison and less than three years after I smuggled him the letter I would meet him in Leopoldov. I joined him at the walk and my first question was whether he found the message. He was so surprised that he almost stopped to walk. He gazed at me and asked: “It was you? “ After he regained fully his speech he told me that both of them found the letters. On their walk next day they by prisoner signs asked each other whether they received the message and both confirmed they did. But indicated the possibility it was a provocation.

Minister Mach spent more than twenty years in prison, and after his release he would write his memoires, which were supposedly stolen, probably because they compromised several present Communist leaders: and there was lot to compromise. I learned that his memoirs were published. As a precaution he might make more copies or wrote a new book perhaps. No information about his memories is confirmed, though. If they exist I wonder whether he mentioned my letters which were not mentioned for history but to give support suffering innocent statesmen threatening with death for leading their nation safely through the war.

From Leopoldov I was transferred to a Forced Labor Camp in the Jachymov area and worked in uranium mines, one of them being Svornost, from Madame Sklodowska-Curie obtained uranium for her experiments that would bring her twice the Nobel Prize. I fourteen months I tried to escape twice. The first one was rather exploratory and proved to be technically impossible without help from outside. The second one was feasible and promising. I was unanimously selected the leader of more than ten fellows. We were digging a tunnel under the most difficult conditions under a hill created by dumping the rocky offal from the Central Camp Bratrstvi/Brotherhood/mine. Since the hill was not compact but consisted of rocks, the roof was unstable and once a while collapsed. There was always danger of cave-in. We were too many to keep the secret, and in the end the authorities learned names of all of us. The optimal number of involved digger is the minimum necessary for the operation which is four: one digger in the front, one pulling the container with the dug material and two to disperse it under the floor: I am talking of our tunnel, in others the material can be dispersed outside. Later, when the tunnel is longer there will be needed more men. With more people we could work two shifts and progress faster , but the rush was the reason that almost all attempts of tunnel escape failed, and not only in Czechoslovak camps. We were taken to the State Security to Strakonice, but surprisingly there were not any consequence. After my first attempt to escape as a punishment my partner and I were transferred to another camp and now, in a much more serious preparation the punishment was the same. We expected to be tried and I still have no idea why we were not. I remember Strakonice often. The most effective contact between prisoners was through the plumbing system. All to do was to remove by rag the water from the toiled and the prisoner was able to talk to the cells above, below and everywhere. Here I overheard discussion between two of my five friends accused of killing a guard at the camp Marianka during an escape attempt: it was total accident, unprepared, unintended, not discussed, not thought about: legally not premediated, not a murder, manslaughter in second degree. But they knew better. One of them, during war a captain in

Czechoslovakian Armored Brigade in England was either killed or committed suicide during their encirclement. By voice I recognized one of the prisoners as Boris Volek, a well liked, intelligent and quiet boy about 22 years old. One of them asked: “What do you think they will do with us ? “ “ Probably they will hang us.” They did, all five of them.

Then came the execution on Nikos Belojanis outside of Athens. His case had nothing to do with the distant Czechoslovakia at all. After the war in Greece, the pro-communist underground group EAM and its armed terrorist units, ELAS led the resistance against the Government. Belojanis was the General Secretary of the Communist Party KKK which in Greece was illegal. I communist hierarchy system he was head of the party. When the violence of ELAS increased, the Government struck back and ninety- four ranked rebel murderers, including Belojanis, were brought to a military trial that sentenced him and the guiltiest of them to death. The international communist machinery organized worldwide protests again the sentence: significantly, the protests ignored the others and were exclusively concentrated on Belojanis. The fellow travelers, kings, prime ministers, writers and intellectuals marched, and not only in communist countries. Marches, rags with worthless signature of naive scapegoats for whom name Belojanis might have mean a mountain in Himalayas tortured the valiant Greek Government. The campaign resembled the robbers, murderers, perjures and anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti , Scottsboro and Rosenbergs affairs. It is noteworthy that these three cases occurred in our Country. The Greeks did not relent, and on March30, 1952, early in the morning Belojanis and three-some sources say eleven-rebels were executed.

There were rumors that in retaliation in former Czechoslovakia and probably in all Soviet satellites all political prisoners sentenced to death that were waiting for decision of the Supreme Court or for clemency had their applications and petitions denied and were hanged. There is no evidence to support this conclusion. It is possible that shortly after the executions in Greece the clemency petitions were rapidly denied and confirmed by the Supreme Court, though. The immediate retaliation was not necessary: one day most of the sentenced to death would die anyway on the beam sticking out of a wall in the basement of the Pankrac prison in Prague.

But reprisals came. I was about eighty political prisoners collected from various uranium mines camps in Jachymov to the Central Camp Bratrstvi. It was impossible to find any key to the selection: repeated escapes, long sentences, no escapes and sentences of three years were puzzling. It reminded of the anecdote from the war. When from the prisoners train someone escaped, in order to have the full count, the Soviet pragmatic escort’s grabbed at the next station the station master who had no idea why he was suddenly on his way Kolyma. Probably, the Russian bureaucracy system ,irresponsibility, and mind factor created the equation with all unknown and no one factor defined. I fell into two categories-repeated escape and 25 years sentence-but if they had brought all of us with these qualification the number would be in thousands for in Jachymov were then thousands of prisoners.

The guards with submachine guns loaded us in two buses and lead with an armored carrier with machine gun we were on the way. Where? Once the night arrived we found out the buses were heading east: the smarter realized it before the vehicles started for in the opposite direction was our best friend, the land of Adenauer and the American Zone. But God did not granted our prayers the driver get lost and end up in Nuremberg or what was left of it after the war. We figured we probably will not be shot since we were travelling through dense forest missing the proper occasions to offer us the bathroom break: nothing pointed to some action. The guards were sleepy and calm, no screaming and not any threats at all. Still better, there were abandoned mines around Jachymov offering serious graves. There were four prisons east of us: Pankrac, Bory, Mirov, Ilava and Leopoldov . After Leopoldov there were only two prisons of consequence, Lublanka and Butyrky in Soviet Union. I forgot Gulag. After few hours we bypassed Prague.

We landed in Leopoldov unfortunately without any escape accidents. They placed us in so called New Solitary, a former military prison. Till the building would become crowded each of us was alone. I believe the whole idea of reprisals lays with the Soviet adviser to the Czechoslovak Security, colonel or general of NKVD/Narodnij Comitet Vnutrenych Del-National Committee of Internal Affairs/. More explanatory word would be “Infernal.” After Stalin’ demise he was shot together with the head of Soviet security, the child molester and rapist Beria. We accepted both deaths with bloodthirsty satisfaction. For few days we were in interrogation centers mode. We did not see anything beside hand at the six inches by six inches communication window when a prisoner brought food. We did not hear a human voice. In few months I would lose at least thirty pounds so talk about food is a considerable exaggeration. I must look like a prisoner from Solovky, originally a Russian monastery, lately the first Soviet extermination camp. It became famous for three reasons: as a historical monastery, as a fatal destination and as an object of a song made famous by the basso Fyodor Tschailyapine or sometimes Tschailyapine: “Kak v Solovkach nam rozkazival inokchestniy Pitirim. “ – “Like told us in Solovky honorable Pitirim.” I the whole United States I was not able to locate one recording of the song, and I believe it is not different in Europe.

The regime approached the tortuous methods I remembered from the interrogation. At anytime a guard or the snitch trustee would knock on the door: “Thirty. Fifty or any other threatening number. It meant the number of squats the victim had to make while loudly counting. Among the poor men were bishops, generals and other profession that imply the person was old: there are not twenty years bishops, and they were forced to squat like I. Even the younger suffered because of the micro portion of food, and then what about fifty or sixty-years old. And I remember, there were never ordered less than thirty squats. The rations calculated on the border of survival were product of Moscow Lublanka prison. There are various methods of inflicting pain and hunger is no less effective than a kick of a hit with fist in the face. Then the consul or almost a consul of a communist country although not an orthodox, a Yugoslav envoy to Czechoslovakia cut his vein and bled to death. Later I would inherit his death cell and discovered brown spots on the walls despite the cell were repainted. The brown spots reminded of the brown spots to which the guide in Saint Bartholomew Orthodox chapel in Prague reverently pointed when I as tourist visited the chapel’s underground. Here the parachutists who had assassinated general Heydrich, the highest German official killed by the resistance perished by the hands of SS and some of them by own hands. Their escape tunnel into the sewer system having failed they had not any chance. Incredible, there is no any plague, any monument on the place where the grenade hit Heydrich’s Mercedes Benz. That in Prague, a city where each accordion player seems to have some kind of memorial.

The death of the consul did not change mummy of the prison life conditions. In the end the pressure came from outside. We did not know, but when suddenly all communication between the families and the inmates were cut off mothers, wives and children wondered why their monthly letters were not panicked. They were used to temporary interruption of contact due to disciplinary punishment and realized there was now a markable difference. Some families had met in Jachymov at the rare visits and kept in contact afterwards: some of them once a while met and exchanged support. When for longer time the family did not receive any letter and wrote to the prison administration they always received an answer with identical explanation: bad behavior and bad attitude to the work. As a result of the inquiry the authorities some time allowed to write home a carefully censured answer. All such interruption in contact was temporary and after one-two month the letter arrived again, but this time tens of relatives stopped write at the same time and the prison officials did not respond to the inquiries for months. Were we dead? Were we in Siberia? With the communist regime it was not only possible but probable. Uncomfortably complaints and unanswerable questions flooded the office of President Klement Gottwald, Ministry of Interior, and other institutions. Where the stereotypical was : “ For the serious and repeated violation of rules and low work ethic his privileges were temporarily suspended. Yours captain Horak.” Did the missing inmates violated the rules and lowered their performance at the same time? It would happen but in 1955 after the conference between the Soviet Union, USA, England and France in Geneva when camps experience spate of strikes. I did not take part. After all I had written about myself it must seem rather surprising, something like a treason. When the strike erupted I was already a month in the solitary for either a hunger strike or other serious and repeated violation of rules and to my horrible pain I missed the opportunity of my life which would never repeat itself. After so many years I still feel the same undiminished pain as if I cowardly failed to support my friends. The fact that I could not help it does not diminish my compunction when I argue with my conscience. Like a masochist I almost envy the beating they were exposed to while all my support was screaming the window: “ Murderers, murderers! “ I do not suppose anybody but former prisoners understand this paragraph, but truth is not always understood.

The disturbing lack of communication increased the worry that we were victims of a communist foul play. In Great Escape there is a scene where the British prisoner Stalag senior officer after a well documented mass escape is summoned to the German Commandant’ office. The commandant announces that the escapees were killed when resisting arrest. The Force officer asks how many. “All of them. “ “All fifty?” “All fifty? No one wounded?” After the war with one exception all the perpetrator were traced to the crime committed in former Czechoslovakia, convinced and hanged. The missing Gestapo official was arrested almost three years later and received prison sentence although as guilty as the rest. It brings me to the Malmedy massacre from WW II where numerous American prisoners of war capture during the last German offensive of the war were dastardly killed. Most of the murderers were sentenced to death, but all charges were dismissed by higher Court. The defense offered evidence that their confession were forced by violent means, they were subjects to mock execution and to all possible torture. Like the Gestapo in the escapees case inexplicably they cheat the executioner. The question is not To be or not to be, but why the American interrogators considered it necessary to use torture at all. There was plenty evidence for each of the suspects to receive ten death sentences: the more accomplices the easier the case. Willingly or accidentally they certainly implicated each other sufficiently to be found guilty. NKVD argued that torture was justified because what they learned was only truth and was supported by spontaneous admissions. In our country the answer is in T-shirts: Those who do not play by rules win. Moreover, the clever defense team managed to insinuate that the poor Americans might have been trying escape. Due process in its fullest application freed the guilty and left the victims in their graves. When the number of requests for explanation outbalanced the authorities will to remain silent we were given piece paper and practically under guns forced to write from this temporary grave cheerful letters home. After my resurrection I would read some of my letters and felt the spirit preserved between lines: relatives of prisoners learn also to read the insinuations and discover the codes contained in them. I never doubted the time comes I will read my messages: I never doubt it as I did not doubt that I will beat communism. It seems as if I steal from general de Gaulle who after fall of Paris grandiloquently announced: “Today we liberated Paris with assistance of American forces. Only such man could become president and abandon Algeria.

One of my many most beloved poems is “Zhdi minya” by otherwise nauseatingly incarnate procommunist Soviet writer and poet Konstantin Simonov. Beside my native language and my adopted English/several version/ I took pains to discover and made copies of it in several other language, including the Russian original. In free translation it ends with “Wait for me when for others nobody is waiting anymore. Don’t drink with them when at memorial pray for my soul. Wait for me and it will be Sunday and I will return because you knew how to wait like no one else did.” This is compilation from various translation and original. I liked the verse “Thousands of deaths will not kill me.” “Wait for me” is one of the most popular Russian poems of all times-communism or not communism-. It was written in February 1942 in a train when Simonov was sent as a correspondent to the front and when he arrived the front was not there pushed by the German Blitz. It was dedicated to his girlfriend, a comic actress whom he would marry the same year. This is about my mothers of all.

In my first letter after the disruption I assured her I will certainly return and asked her to wait and to be patient and not to listen to those who do not believe she will ever see me again. As she always wished I will finish college and help with school to my fifteen-year old brother. I made more promises what I will do. It must look as if I was on vacation someplace on Majorca or on Riviera and was flying home tomorrow. Never before nor after the isolation did I write such tender letter, even when I was in relatively acceptable labor camp. There were so many insinuations on the fall of communism and the indications of the horrible truth that I cannot stop to wonder the censure let it pass without me being thrown in the hole. It appears the more brutal conditions the more I loved my poor mother and the more I love her the more I needed her love. Twenty-two years later-six years after I arrived to America I finished my education and with immodest pride I announced fulfillment of my promise. My father was as happy as my mother. Maybe he believe I will come back more than she. They visited me alternatively. During my stay in labor camp I committed so many trespasses that I was permitted during all the time only on visit and father let her go.

The pressure of our relative caused the sovereignty of the persecution to relax and the whip was shortened, but the end came in one day. An epidemic of typhus in the Leopoldov New Solitary caused a panic. It was not an epidemic of the  "Martin Arrowsmith",  "San Michele" or "The Betrothed" proportion but typhus can spread very quickly among prisoners as well as among the guards who could spread the epidemic in their communities. All of us were checked, one by one, in the office by civilian doctors and when I was scared I was finished with adventures I found I had way to go. I could not resist such a rare occasion as mass chaos and unsure faces of the threatened guards to help the medicine. When the doctor was measuring my temperature I rubbed the thermometer in order to add few degrees to it. The guard caught me in the middle of the act and while not happy under circumstances he refrained from punishment. I believe it was the only time during my sojourn in various houses of imprisonment I was forgiven: the guards were this time in mode of panic, and not an organized one. It was never clearly established how isolated persons who were allowed to leave their cells only for less than hour exercise where any personal contact was prevented could be infected with typhus. It might have been a new prisoner who brought it, but he was able to infect only his cellmate providing he had on, and nobody else: someone might have to get infected when visiting the infirmary, but again, could not gave it to anybody else. It is also possible that the prisoners during the walk inhaled the typhoid bacillus freely moving in the air.

Because of an early discovery by the prisoner-doctor Dr. Krbec, in civilian life a prominent authority and quick and radical steps to suppress the disease there were no fatalities. The bureaucracy was not allowed to interfere and the doctors’, both the civilian and of prison orders were respected. It was not always that way. An old man from Eastern Slovakia was infected with botulin where about 63 % if of patients die. It is vitally important to give the patient doses of Types A and B antiserum as soon as possible, no later than within 24 hours other ways he will not survive. Originally botulism was suspected in the death of president Harding. In the present case our doctors, Dr.Krbec and Dr. Smid, both serving long sentences explained the necessary steps to proper prison authorities, stressing the immediate need for the antitoxin which is available in hospital. I guess the closest source was no farther than 20 miles. Following the procedure, the prison office filled the proper forms as when requesting Aspirin and proceed according to protocol. Repeatedly the doctors appealed to the officers warning them that the man will die within hours if not treated, but to no avail. Maybe the office thought the doctors were bluffing. The antiserum arrived when the prisoner was dead and it was not murder .

Following typhus we need not be afraid of the knock on the door and the squats were abandoned to the jury of history. One letter a month was permitted as were less frequent visits. Rations were increased and the New Solitary became a regular prison, if there is such animal. The most welcomed change was that slowly the inmates were transformed to so called common cell which housed around 30 men. One of the last transferred was I. But I returned to the Solitary frequently for a week or month since I could not get rid of my bad habit to cause troubles. In some of the actions I was accused as being the instigator and I have to admit the authorities were not wrong. Under any pretext, legitimate or provoked we declared hunger strike which meant automatically the solitary. I remember one prisoner had died in Leopoldov following more than a year long refusal to eat. He was force fed but this treatment obviously cannot last forever. Forced feeding was not practiced since our strikes did not last longer than three weeks.

Once I returned from solitary after isolation because of hunger strike when I noticed a few friends assembled in front of the office in the common cells section. They told me they were about to be escorted to the holes: they declared a hunger strike. Without asking about the reason I joined them and returned to the punishment cells in the solitary for maybe another week.

I have read several theories on how long a person last without food. I laughed when I saw in a serious newspaper picture of union secretary on wheelchair after three days on hunger strike. It was a nauseating and lowly fraudulent pretension, pure publicity act. As for my experience, I did touch neither food nor any liquid for six days without any difficulties. One of my friends were making handstands after ten days without eating and I am convinced I could, too, but I never learned how to do them.

We are coming to the saddest day of my imprisonment, a day that helped me to understand murder. That day a guard solemnly handed me a telegram. My good father had died and I will never be able to thank him for his visits and the love he had showed me: end of fishing together. My mother naively asked me to come to the funeral. The telegram was delivered to me a week after my father was buried in Zohor when it was too late to bother the authorities . Such request were routinely denies anyway. More inmates lost their parents while in prison, but my loss was unbearably painful. Shortly before his death my father received the visit permit what would have been our last meeting. I suspect he knew he was dying and he wished see me once more, just once more and then never again. He wanted to die and take the memory of his son with him to the second world.

Had I known he was coming I would have avoid any troubles since in that case the permit could be cancelled for any minor offense. I violated some rule again and the permit was recalled. Recently promoted lieutenant Durica came to my cell and announced the news. He told me because of my trespass the permit was cancelled. He described how my father had come to the gate and he, Durica turned him back; he could not see me for I was punished. My father was a meek person who left the house only go fishing: I do not remember he went once to a restaurant. He was not my mother who was a fighter and would have argue and scream on a general, not only on the lieutenant. Father probably just turn around and realized that he will have to die without taking part from me. Communist revenge rolls over graves. I remember the Ballad of Reading and best I remember : “Everybody kills how he knows”. And now I know, but I do not kill. I only remember also from a hundred years old magazine Svetozor: “It is possible not to forgive the dead.” This I do.

Two weeks before my father’s death, in October 1956, Hungary erupted in a revolution. Sixty Andrassy Place, the seat of the Secret Police failed in its mission. Members of the Allamvedely Osztaly, the Hungarian Cheka, known as Avos were hunted like tigers in an African Safari, only they were not tigers. Easily recognized by identical yellow shoes, a mark of recognition that turned against them, they were beaten and some hanged on the Budapest baroque lamp post. “Lampa langos arvanyi benta kapunal, lampa langos arwanyi mindig otanal…” are the words from Hungarian version of Lilly Marlene- “old lamp was always standing, standing always there."     A The lamp did not last for two weeks, until Soviet tanks crushed Hungarian motorcycles, but many people missed it. And protests against barbarians spread from progressive countries through the second world to the third world. On threshold of death my father saw the communists punished and later my mother told me he saw in Hungarian revolution revenge for my suffering. He could not believe the pictures of Avos agents hanging from ashes on Budapest streets.

In 1960, the majority of Russian satellites granted political amnesties: it was not because of compassion, but under pressure of Russians themselves. They nearly emptied their camps. In former Czechoslovakia few political prisoners remained and these were freed two years later. The process was slow. In the Soviet Union the release begun three years after Stalin’s fatal stroke, in Czechoslovakia four years after Soviet gestures. I was exempted from both amnesties. It appears I was the longest serving political prisoners in the country, one of the first arrested, one of the last freed. I admit, I deserved it to some extent, yet almost seven years after Soso’s Dzugasvilli funeral, years after Khrushchev’s speech to the XX congress and consequent relaxation of his regime seems too long. When my time arrive the only persons behind the bars were person sentenced for variously interpreted war crimes statutes. They were sentenced by People’s Courts. The name of the court explains everything.

My angry mother and sister, infuriated by my elimination from amnesties found a courageous attorney who attacked the Leopoldov authorities that for eleven years they were prejudiced against me. In his fillings I was a model of innocence. In this he was somewhat wrong. The attorney skillfully argued that my frequent trips to the solitary were evidence of their hatred, although the commandant could object it was proof how disobedient I was. To satisfy the prison officials and also my family, it was decided to transfer me to Kartouzy, an ancient monastery of the Carthusian Order, now used as medium rare prison. As in respect to the past, many priests and bishop were assigned to serve their sentences in rooms where centuries ago their spiritual ancestors were chanting their penance: “Miserere Nobis, Domine, Miserere Nobis . Immediately another , no less daring attorney started campaign for my release. He stressed that Leopoldov picture of me as a talented rebel could not be proved since many guards and five top commanders were replaced and the new officers relied on my file without possibility to verify whether they were truthful. I think the authorities were embarrassed. I was in prison longer than any killer arrested in the same time. When Lublanka and Gulag were empty how another socialist prison could hold people? Obviously, they welcomed my mother’s request for my parole and ordered me to appear before the parole board. I had some compunctions since the director of Kartouzy was lieutenant Kral who before was director of Leopoldov and had very bad experience with me.

There were some unfavorable present events, too, that endangered my chance before the commission: my propensity for not pleasing the administration must have been transferred from Leopoldov with me. The technical control prisoner in the prison industry was released and since all persons able to read micrometer and drafts went home my friend without my knowledge suggested me the civilian representative of the company. I crudely refused, but kept my reasons for myself. I was pressing on machine plastic switches for electronic devices and I said I do not want to change my job where I was happy. The technical control measured whether the parts were within tolerance and I would have to report prisoners to the guard. The guilty pressmen were not punished: the set up man corrected the press and usually that was the end of the affair. The repeated violators were transferred to glass works or some another place for the man has not the proper skill if he did not noted the faulty product. I could not report any of my fellows to the guards for any reason. For that I was too long imprisoned. After much haggling the sergeant sent me to solitary for indefinite time. It was the only punishment I received in Kartouzy, but the most hurtful. I might as well not to appear at the hearing, but I kept firmly refusing the excellent, prestigious and easy job, coveted especially in prison. They must not have anybody else for the function and were desperate.

I was in similar situation in Jachymov mines. The shift supervisor Fero Gabris had a not dangerous accident but had to seek medical help on the surface. Maybe at random, but more likely because of my personality, before he left he put me in full charge for the few hours remaining and told me to make sure everything is perfect and asked me to write daily shift report. This duty would not compromise my standing in the eyes of my friends. Fero was in high position and still as prisoner he was blameless and everybody wanted work on his shift. I was for the first time a boss, and suddenly of quite few people: we were about fifty. I need not give any order. All I did I checked the ceiling with a hammer whether there was not lose some rock that could fall and hurt someone and made sure the miners are careful with the explosives. Upon return to the surface I presented the detailed report in the office to engineer/technical academic title equivalent to PhD/ Smirnov, the Russian in charge of the mine. He was enthusiastic. Our production highly surpassed the average. I did not know what the average was, but Smirnov was enthusiastic. On the spot he appointed me as Gabris successor until he returns and then, as soon as there was opening he would put me in charge of a shift. In camp the position brought enormous advantages: extra food, more frequent letters and visits, and most important, protection from guards, who had to respect the supervisor as if he were a civilian. It also offered suspicion that the supervisor was in many cases a snitch.

I refused to take over the shift, even until Fero returns. Smirnov said they cannot waste people like me: “To drill and load a cart can any durak/dummy/ “ he argued. How many professors, attorneys, doctors and intellectual were drilling and loading carts underground! Smirnov was wondering: “Pochemu? Skazi.” “Why not? Tell me.” “Nemogu. Nekhochu, gospodin Smirnov.” I cannot. I do not want, Mr. Smirnov. He was trying sincerely to help me and could not understand. He was aware the prisoners in any position than rank and file had bad reputation as informers and correctly suspected it was my reason for refusal. He had feeling I would never sink that low and therefore he wondered on my refusal. After escape refusal to work or to work on assigned place was the most serious trespass. I tried to argue I had not experience, but he pointed out he had superiors less qualified than me. The supervision was simple: to check the roof for lose rocks and if not stable to order wooden supports, the check the direction of the face was straight, to makes sure the rails were laid flat at zero degree and not raising. All this could do any average miner with few months in the mine. He asked me about length of my sentence and when I told him he had no doubts about my attitude to communism. He just said: “Tak.” “Yes.” He said I must hate Russians, but his “Tak” betrayed he was Ukrainian. I pointed my favored story was Pikovaia Dama-The queen of Spades and recited names like Tolstoy, Lermontov, Dostoyevski, and few composers. His “tak” betrayed he was Ukrainian and I told him that when we were involved in war against Soviet Union we had mandatory Russian in school and I stressed our teacher was Ukrainian count Semen Gavrilovich Magdenko whom I praised in a warm monolog. As all Russians in Jachymov he knew thoroughly the Russian culture. At the end he promised me he will not press me and if I changed my mind his offer was open. Against the rules of non-fraternization he shook my hand and let me go. He never reported my reluctance to the promotion, but whenever he met me he asked the same question to which I always answered in the same words.

This lengthy expose explains my attitude towards my promotion in Kartouzy. The sergeant visited me in the hole and, like Smirnov, without any threat , tried to convince me to accept the assignment. I openly told him I cannot be responsible for punishment of my fellow prisoners, although I was aware no one ever was persecuted for errors in the production and he assured me of this practice himself. I did relent. I remembered the story when Caesar divorced his wife who was accused of adultery, but was found complete innocent. He explained that Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion. The sergeant assured me that my friends want me to accept the position and said that otherwise they would find someone who might cause them troubles. He suggested I try for one week and if I did not like I can leave without any consequence. I accepted and my friends were really happy. They were afraid they might have gotten a person who could snitch on them.

But there were doubts about my character. During my first stay in Leopoldov in 1949 in order to steal the prohibited newspaper from the floor commander office I volunteered to clean the office: the door was mostly open and I noticed the paper sticking from the trash basket. Since my first day twenty people had every day Pravda at their pleasure. It was our only communication with the outside world. Now I believe Kanta, the commander, was enough intelligent to allow me take the paper. The office room was so tiny that he could observe each my move. Being of the old guard and sufficiently anticommunist he closed both eyes to my theft. His brother was also a guard and recently I have read an article in political prisoners signed by name Kanta, most probably descendant of one of the brothers: it confirms my feeling from decades before they were on our side. A contributing factor was most of my extended family was living close to Leopoldov, in Sered, where Kanta had home.

Pravda kept coming as if we had subscribed it. Once an inmate told me that another man told him I was too much around the office. No one was aware where from I kept bringing the newspaper and in order to protect Kanta I could not reveal I was around the office to steal the paper. I did not offer any explanation, I did not show any excitement nor anger. I did not think about ungratefulness. To the disappointment of the commander who liked me because he had long known about my family in Sered I resigned the very next day. It was hard to explain my reason and he did not insist for an experienced guard who had observed many snitches he must have assumed I was suspected of being one of them.

At night my cellmates asked where the newspaper was. I answered they have to find a more skillful person to steal one when I was not qualified . Later the truth emerged. My replacement soon got smart and started to steal the paper like a professional, however, he was from another cell and my cell had to wait their turn. Now they discovered why I had volunteer. I did not wait until the newspaper was smuggled to our room. Through another connection and with my inventiveness I was able to receive the paper another source, but had to return it in one hour. Only my best friends have a short time to peruse it.

It might seem that my behavior was incorrect for I cut off my friends only source of information and it looks like a grandiloquent punishment of innocent prisoner

Lieutenant Kral must have been a prominent member of the party. I learned that in 1960 at the Olympic games in Rome he was member of the Secret Security detail charged with responsibility for prevention of the Czech and Slovak athletes’ defection. But he did not punish me for my promotion affair. I remained the technical inspector after the week long probation time expired. During my time no one prisoner was reported for his mistakes. Once I found someone’ products were outside the tolerance I notified the set up man who was a prisoner who corrected the press. The sergeant promised me not to interfere with my work and he kept his promise.

I had the opposite experience on the Elias mine in Jachymov in 1950. In camps the inmates were officially not allowed to use explosives: they were permitted to carry them, but the blasting was reserved for licensed specialists, nonetheless, everybody from directors of the enterprise to the last civilian on the ladder tacitly encouraged us to do our own blasting which because of ventilation was performed shortly before the end of shift. For one man it was practically impossible to blast several faces within short time. The faces were far from each other and some vertical so called chimneys required climbing ladders sometimes nearly fifty yards high. Usually the blast master had no more than thirty minutes to perform the blasting operation in several places. We, the prisoners, were not only tolerated as blast masters, but encouraged, and virtually forced to violate the rules and blast ourselves. We the explosive Donarit, fuses, loaded the holes and blasted: all this was the civilian’s duty. All guards respected the systematic breaking of the rules.

One day during the drilling a guard visited our face. I politely stop the drill. He greeted me with the ancient miners Zdar buh”, a phrase impossible to translate. Buh means God and Zdar is success. He casually turn our discussion to blasting. Neither my partner nor I were alarmed. He felt sorry for the blast master how many steps he has to climb to our chimney and suggested we should help him. Disturbed by his unexpected insinuations we answered that as prisoners we were not allowed to blast. After much haggling and more lying , he told me they all knew we were helping the civilians to blast and that was all right. There is nothing to it. “As a man to man, do you blast sometimes by yourself ?” We admitted we did. Not only he but all guards knew. It was not necessary hide the well known fact.

Returning to the camp we has to pass the guardroom. My partner was standing inside and the guard waved me to go in, too. In the office he told me he will write down my statement. What statement? “Concerning your admission that you were manipulating Donarit and fuses. “ I denied we ever touched any explosives. Rarely I was outplayed in situation like this, but here my partner was more audacious than I. He said: “ How could we blast when prisoners are not allowed to do it? “ With the speed we called “search system”, slowly looking for the letters, he typed the statement anyway. He gave it to us to read it and asked us to sign it. With disgust we refused both. With maniacal roar he asked us about our sentences. When I answered I was serving 25 years he wondered he did not noticed me before and threatened me with particular attention in the future. I assured him there was nothing extraordinary in me that warranted any attention and that this was the first time I was accused of causing troubles.

He must have been a new guard who did not knew the routine or was seeking promotion. In order to protect the civilians against the imbecile for some time we made arrangement with our blast master to fire our face, but reverted to the ancient practice soon. What amounted to a comedy our supervisor complained the director that a guard did not let us handle explosives and wanted prevent us from violating the rules.

At the parole hearing were present the prosecutor, a representative of the prison administration, and a woman from the community. Before me several others cases were handled but from the faces of the inmates I could not tell whether they were on their way home of back to the cell. From the three members of the board only the prosecutor had any influence-positive or negative but I am convinced that in criminal cases the meeting is important, but in political it is decided before by the prison officials and the hearing is just formality. None of the three members of the commission showed any animosity. The prosecutor was practically the only one speaking. It seemed they felt sympathy with me due to the fact that I was in prison nearly 16 years. The prosecutor read Kral’s favorable evaluation that although during my first years in prison I committed some minor violations but recently there were not any complaints against me recently. No one word about my escape events nor my numerous hunger strikes: surprisingly, my affair concerning the technical control job was not mentioned either, and it happened not long ago. The board had to justify before the higher authorities my possible release and by revealing my prison past they would hardly consider me worthy of their trust. The ignoring of my difficulties gave me hope: further, there was no one sentenced by the political State Court in prison anymore: I was the only one, the other thousands were two or three years home. Kral wrote that since my transfer to Kartouzy I was a good prisoner and worked diligently. In view of these facts the administration recommends my release. The prosecutor agreed with the recommendation and now at least one of the two members of the board had to join him. As probably arranged before, both of them supported his proposal. I thanked them and was dismissed. In the waiting room were sitting few other candidates: they on my face could read I was free.

In half an hour I was at the gate where Commandant Kral was waiting: for sure he was aware I would be released a wanted to release me personally, and unheard step. He had known me in Leopoldov many years ago and maybe he punished me few times but now with his evaluation wanted to do penance for the past. Prisoners were required to pay for each day in the punishment cell, which, in my case would have amount to an enormous amount. Almost always the authorities forfeited the debt. With me the lieutenant wanted announced the cancellation personally. He told me that on his own authority he decided to forgive the whole amount, shook my hand and said the last words I heard as prisoner: “Okamzite propustit”. “Release immediately”. Later, the exact words used Judge Ito when the jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty.

On my way to the Kartouzy railroad station I met the sergeant who had put me in the hole for refusing the promotion to the controller. He asked me where I was running and I realized that truly I was not walking but running pretty fast as if scarred I might be brought back. He must had also known I would be released on parole . he was joking whether I had escaped and appeared as friendly as the commander. In my borrowed civilian suit I could have past for an acceptable man who had fled the inhospitable surroundings. He also shook my hand wishing me good luck and said he hoped I would not come back. He pointed the way to the station and I unconsciously resumed my middle distance runner speed.

I took the train to Prague and there, on the former Wilson station I experienced the first miracle of freedom. I met my former cellmate from Leopoldov J and one of my best friends whether in prison of free Jirka Nyckalo who if not for another miracle would have been hanged like his accomplice . Another accomplice run or rather walked into the fire zone in a suicide attempt and was killed by the tower guard. They tried in Leopoldov to break through the gate in a seized truck. The steel bars stopped the truck and one of the most daring escape attempts was foiled. Had they drive faster the gate would have given up but it might have mean they might have loose the consciousness or die. Pepik Vanicek death was the second in my life I witnessed, both having been tragic. The other one I described in a book, and it is maybe more horrible. The first Jirka accomplice’s death was especially tragic for his mothers. Her other son was killed at the end of the war in the Prague revolution.

“Did you escape?” beside the guards these were the first words I heard as a free man. My answer was as well specific: “No. Did you?” I really meant it. We could not understand that the inmates can get out of prison any other way. The questions were as natural as my running to the station. What kind of man Nyckalo was is best illustrated by the fact that he was one of few of us who were excluded from both amnesties: these people were in the eyes of administration the worst enemies of the regime and we cannot do anything less than agree with them. His father told me a amusing story about his son who never touched a drink but on the graduation day he came home professionally drunk and when his parents were scolding him for his despicable way to enter life, he countered with “It is not and art not to get drunk, but to get drunk is a drudge. After the Russian invasion in 1968 he left Czechoslovakia, the only child of his parents, for the third country in history of his family: his father was born in Czarist Russia. It is peculiar that another of my friends, Viktor Zemljanski-Dikan with whose widow we are still in contact was born in Russia. Several of other friends were Russians and one of my favored professors was count Semen Gavrilovich Magdenko who taught me Russian.

After more than fifteen years I came home and found mama preparing for the laundry day in our yard. She welcomed me home: “Did you escape?” It reminds me of my grandson Duncan who watched too many movies. One day he was talking something about death and said: “You know, when people die…like when they kill them”. Instructed by the violence on the tube he could not imagine that people can die other way then by gun. My mother changed her mind and had doubts about my identity. Later she admitted that only after her question what I want to eat I answered promptly “fazulu”-“beans she was satisfied it was actually her son. Still she was not convinced I had escaped. My favored beans could convince her I was Ladislav Hodur, but beans could serve as evidence to my claim I came home with blessing of the law.

Many inmates helped me in prison, especially during my repeating troubles, inmates and some from administration. Victor Zemljanski in Kartouzy convinced the authorities I was the best choice for the post of the technical control post. I am grateful for his help despite ending in the hole. I remember the director Smirnov who did not report me for refusing the job of supervisor which could have a catastrophic consequence for my welfare. I have to thank all participants in the tunnel enterprise in the camp on forced labor whose denial of my leadership in the digging prevented the most severe punishment. My name appeared repeatedly during the interrogation but when followed the logical question if I was the leader, all of them refused to identify me as such. I will never forget prisoner Kosturik, Leopoldov the dentist who nearly attacked one of the toughest guards in defense of me and his now modified and nearly forgotten Hippocratic Oath. I was about to lose my second wisdom tooth with three of four roots. The first one had pulled in Bratislava by prisoner Dr. Ferdinand Subik, who in Katyn was member of the international commission investigating the murder of 8000 Polish officers and was professor of pathology at the Slovak University, one of the nation’s best poets whose Surany I know still by heart and have the text framed. When he found time he was Surgeon General. Besides, he was born in Kuklov, short distance from my village. Anesthetic was a rare entity in Leopoldov while I was in unbearable pain. Because of infection Kosturik had no choice but to extract the tooth. During the procedure in pain I accidentally kicked the instrument table, knocking the tools on the floor. The guard started to yell and threatened me he will take me to the solitary. I was afraid he would hit me and so was the dentist who returned scream for scream and was hollering on the officer more than he himself. Kosturik, looking deranged yelled I held long enough but the pain is terrible. He was cussing communism, president Gottwald and the government for not providing anesthetic even for the most extreme cases. The guard accidentally approached my chair and the dentist thinking he wanted to hit me barred him with his body, waving his hands, one holding his tool looking like pliers. His mouth was screaming “No! NO! Leave him alone!”, but his eyes cried “Murder!” Kosturik pulled the tooth and gave me few days off work, but nothing happened after the incident. The officer was not very popular among the other guards and he must have to realize he went too far: he must have understood that I was in pain and could not to control myself. I did not violated any rules and did not do anything that warranted punishment. There were many others who at their own risk eased my fate and it is too late to thank some of them: now only God can reward them for me.

After my release I had to serve six months in the Army. I found out that even after sixteen years of total communism his secret opponents survived in the unexpected positions which occupants were thought to be dedicated comrades, triple checked and vetted. Without asking two Majors assigned me to a garrison closest to my town which was a serious violation of the Army basic regulations. Besides, I was former political prisoner and now I was allowed to serve eleven miles from my village. They certainly bet their career. They crossed all possible lines. One of them of them advised me to get married and have as soon as possible which would relax my supervision under which all former political prisoners were kept. This was easy since at that time I was already married and my wife was few months pregnant.

The commander of the garrison showed the same sympathy as the majors and his whole attitude towards me pointed to another example of silent resistance. If such opponents of communism served in the army, what about civilians. To my embarrassment Major Kaspar made me “soldier of the month”. On that occasion I received a book with dedication from the commander. I wonder what would happen to him if some fanatic officer discovered my reward. He probably knew it would look nice in my files and wanted help me. Despite everything I am grateful the three officers.

Now comes the dessert. I was assigned to the elite unit , the Civil Defense, trained to deal with riots, civil disturbances, and other internal troubles. We were also trained to deal during eventual war with limiting the radiation after the atomic attacks. The Civil Defense cooperated with the Worker Militia, an armed arm of the communist party that consisted of the most reliable cadres. I found an explanation why I was sent to this special unit: the good majors wanted me to be close to my wife and mother and accidentally the closest detachment was the Civil Defense they assigned me to the coveted unit. With all this procommunist achievement I was ready for joining the State Security.

In the meantime Victor was arrested when trying to take his fiancé Vera into West Germany.

I was released in 1964 and since that time until I left the Country in 1968 I had only one problem, but one that could have lend me back to prison. Victor, my friend from Kartouzy came to visit us and asked me to help him to escape to Austria. I was living less than four miles from the border and although now there were many dangerous obstacles my knowledge of the area offered advantage. After my release I was seriously thinking to flee, but because of my mother and other family I decided against the idea. It was horrible prospect for at that time there was no sign of communist degradation, just the opposite. Only six years ago Brezhnev brutally invaded Hungary, they were in Afghanistan and if Poland or East Germany showed signs of dissatisfaction, Russians were quick. It was different border now than fifteen years ago when we used to swim to the Austrian side. Now there were several security zones with barbered wire, sentries with dogs, and towers. The access was limited to residents, which I was, but that would not help against scientifically defended border.

This I explained to Victor. I described the layout, where most probably the guards were stationed . I warned him never to run, even when the river would be on sight, but if he was discovered it was better to abandon the attempt and with exception the border guards barred his way, always run away from the border since the soldiers will run towards it. I asked him to start crawling about a two miles after he crossed the highway not far from our home. Crawling is slower but safer. Most important if he spots more than one guard he must abandon the mission: it means there is some action in progress. Later I would read about the iron rule, violation of which cost six lives on Mount Everest: if not beyond a certain point by fourteen hours zero turn unconditionally back or the climber or the climber has not chance to return to the safety of camp. Even if it is the best May or June sunshine, there is only one way: back. One of the climbers asked what he will have to do if at fourteen zero he is hundred and fifty feet from the summit. “The same what you would have to do when you are fifty feet from the top of the world: you make face-about and walk back. Everest will be there tomorrow but not you to climb it.” It seems an exaggerated requirement, but bear in mind that on a mountain, not only in Himalayas, it might take an hour to climb several yards.

One night Victor was on his way. Half an hour after crossing the highway he was challenged by the guards who ordered him to stop and when he started running they opened fire. He was a trained athlete: hockey player, gymnast, and he excelled in other sports so that he initially escaped. Moreover, in darkness it is difficult to hit a target even with sub machine gun. He was extremely courageous, but in the end they caught him. Before his attempt he was living with us and once I heard about the shooting I realized who had been the object. I also trusted Victor would not implicate me. He denied I had any connection with his attempt. With my past and the fact I was living on the border the agents would believe the Cinderella story rather than his fairytale. Investigation of escapes abroad was a serious crime and as such investigated thoroughly. Among my parole condition was that I would avoid any contact with any former political prisoners.

Shortly after Victor arrest my mother had a visitor. An agent of the security and asked what I was doing . His questions concerned my family mostly and if I go to public places. She explained that in all my life I did not drink one bottle of alcohol and besides going to movies and soccer game I spend the time home: never once I was in a tavern. He told her to make sure I continue in the same way because my first duty is my family. Thus I will not be bothered by anybody. I was eliminated as suspect in Viktor’s attempt and also overlooked was my association with a former prisoner: the agent said that if I behave no one has any interest in making my life difficult and no one will. He said that he just wanted make sure everything was all right with me. He did not took any notes. Significantly, I was not called witness to his trial.

Again someone had protected me. They had a case against me and this was a warning to avoid any dangerous adventures. The visit of the agent served to make me aware that they know I was helping Viktor, but let the affair go: after Army, I learned that there was opposition against the red regime even in the State Security. Only people who lived during the worst times of communism understand my point. The regime that executed hundreds of innocent victims, whose prisons and camps forced labor where 99 % of political prisoners were innocent, a country where for violation of the borders could the perpetrator receive fifteen years, where for sixteen years ruled terror worse than in Soviet Union, high officers and Security agents in high position silently conspired against the cruel government. Then came the communism with “human face.” If communism has a face, it is just human mask.

After his release the Victor Zemljanski smuggled in the trunk of his car his wife through three borders to the West. He studied in Germany and became a dentist. Unfortunately he died of lung cancer before he was fifty. His fighting spirit did not leave him when dying: he tore all the tubes which my nurse had called spaghetti and they had to tie him to his last bed. At that time he was aware he had short time to live, so he knew what he was doing and what he wanted.

I was working in a quarry near our village and since there was neither train nor bus available I was riding beside feet my favored means of transportation, a bicycle. The night of my fortieth birthday an event with international impact changed my native country and my personal life and the change is lasting for forty-six years. On the highway where Victor had been arrested, I noticed the tracks of tank belt: probably a military exercise. There was high voltage tension between my country and Russia in political circles circulated rumors of cooperative maneuvers between the two countries. At the railroad crossing milk truck was laying on its side in the ditch. I asked the crossing guard. He responded: “You do not know? Russian have occupied us.”

I returned home and woke my wife. We turned on radio and listened to desperate calls for international intervention. The anchors who were making the calls were ago convicted communist, so now it was communists against communists. Schools and factories were closed and in the cities mass demonstrations of infuriated, courageous people took place. We naively believe that the Powers will undertake and armed action against another Power because of a small country. After thirty years Chamberlain came back: “We will not go to war because of a small unknown Middle-Europe. To his disappointment Germany did, although for another Middle –Europe country. The idea of passive resistance led the nation to action. The directional signs were changed: the occupants instead going North might ended up going West. Armed resistance would be pointless as testified the example of the massacres in Hungary. It would be a suicide, nevertheless, some people would always commit it. Anyway, weapons were not available and the Army had not chance.

For this I have spent fifteen years in prison and camps? To stand helpless, with hands in the pockets? In anger I realized the history was being made without me, history was cheating me, who had the primary right to take part in it, and not a non-speaking role. Should I “ to stand by the road and salute the victors when they march by?” I felt I was not even standing but sleeping. The British author who wrote this words must have never lost since the beginning of the poem asks: “Give me, dear God, that in the battle of life I will have the courage to risk and win, and that it be according to the law…” the rest is the standing by the road. I remember a book from a French author where he describe a weak man who when arrested betrays all his Maquis fellows. After release he desperately wants to redeem himself ready for any sacrifice, even his life. The war ends before he could blow some bridge over Loire and he has missed his chance forever. He had to live the rest of his life with a knife embedded in his conscience. If I did not do anything, I would forever suffer like the French. I did not to miss my payday for the prison and another opportunity hardly comes: the future proved I was right.

There is an axiom that God gives every man only one opportunity to become immortal. My opportunity was now. I rode my bike to a four-way crossing on the main Bratislava-Brno-Prague road and in vain searched for a road sign that was not changed. All were pointing to wrong direction. In anger I wiggled one of them till it got lose and threw it on the grass. It was better than just to change the direction. I was feeling like if I blew up a Russian fifty tons tank. Many find my act ridiculous and childish . Ask Russians.

There was no question about remaining in Slovakia. I might get easily in trouble. The borders were practically open. The furious Slovak guards did not care what the people were doing in the fire zone. To obtain the passport was not problem, but I was a former political prisoner. Had I was refused it, we could go through the unguarded border on land. Russians did not care at all. It appears they were under orders to avoid any violence since we were a socialist country and their former faithful ally, but they still were victims and I keep the soil from the grave of one of them. I went to check the things in Bratislava. I was walking close to my former school with few people. A month ago only selected citizens were allowed to travel to the free countries. Almost never, both husband and wife could take vacation in Germany or Austria. Family vacation with children were forgotten art. I read a report from Soviet Union. With sufficient connection or a massive bribery the citizen could obtain an apartment, car o position, however, a Russian pud of gold would not get a passport.

I filled and application and received an appointment in two weeks. In the passport office I was admitted to a middle-age man, major Plecho. In the application I stated I wanted to go to Vienna for a friend’s wedding. Unknown to me there was a rumor that the easiest way to obtain the passport was to state in the application as a reason for travel a wedding. In fact majority of the application complied with the rumor. In my application I admitted I had been sentenced by State Court since it was obvious every person asking to travel abroad was thoroughly checked just as a routine, despite the relaxation of the procedure. He was joined by another major. Both were pleasant and in the end Major Plecho asked me what I will do if I will not get the document. At first I wanted to be dramatic and say that one morning the border guards might discover and overturned boat in Morava with five bodies floating by, but immediately I realized it was one of the most stupid, showy, and pretending thoughts of my life. How I would feel if I was in his place? Had I told him the theatrical threat for sure he would not issue me the passport. He was used to ask this question at the conclusion of each interview probably and making him a potential murderer after the almost assurance I will get the passport would be an unpardonable and rude insult. In the entirely excluded case some of his superiors would reject my application I had a safe way on the land from Bratislava, which lies on the Austrian border. he was as aware as I that if I was refused the paper I would prefer the land to Morava. With three children I would never risk a river, and this he knew also.

Naturally, both officers did not believe my wedding story and as I was leaving Plecho stopped me and told me: “Be frank with me. Tell me as man to man will you return to Czechoslovakia?” “I will never come back.” “Your passport will be ready tomorrow at two o’clock.”

I remembered “man to man” story from the mine and the blasting when being frank could cost me hole or maybe a transport to maximum security prison.

My wife and four of my children since visited Slovakia, my wife twice, but I am keeping my word to Major Plecho. Communism fell yet communists remained. Marina Tsvetayeva wrote verses: “Where are the swans?” “Swans have left.” “Where are the ravens?” “Ravens have stayed.” Maybe these words led her hands to tie the rope around her neck when she hanged herself.

When I was on Victor’s funeral in Germany, I came as far as the wire separating her from Czech Republic and could step over the low fence, but I did not. My children offered to buy me a trip to the country three of them were born, but with the communists still behind the scenes, I did not go.

My wife picked the passports, and after waiting in front the with the wedding guests overwhelmed Austrian Embassy for the visa we left the country of our birth. Plecho advised her to leave immediately since Russians can seal the borders any time. On September 28 1968 we were on our way. Everything was fine. We arrived to the border control town. With our custom official came two Russian soldiers with sub machine guns hanging over their arms. When the Russians were checking our documents, in hear three year old innocence our daughter asked: " These are the Russian svine?" She just repeated what all were saying. My wife covered with her hand Martuska's mouth and the child must have wondered what misdeed she have committed. "Svine" means pigs both in Slovak and Russia besides other Slavic language. The angry faces of the soldiers manifestly showed they heard the words, but cleverly pretended they did or did not understand. They saw a child, and very cute one at that, and did the best of the embarrassing situation-nothing. We were less than a mile from freedom and if they would have expelled us from the train, it would have been double pain and we would have try to leave illegally after all. Among us were mostly future refugees like and they upset me by being angry at our girl. I did not punish her for her experience in the challenging international affairs was limited by her age, and her diplomatic ability was no better than mine.

One hour later, after crossing the same bridge where I ninety years jumped from the train on my mission, at the Vienna Sudbanhoff we reported to the on the station permanently present immigration official and asked for political asylum which the next day was granted.

We were placed first to a refugee family camp and then transferred to Neuhaus where we lived in a hotel. On Christmas Eve we arrived to New York, to our present homeland where by now I have spent more than half of my horribly uneventful life. Only when we landed on Kennedy Airport I felt assured. Like the infantile belief that with the uprooting the road sign after the occupation I did something useful, during the flight I thought that Russians still could shoot us down. I am not a paranoid, but I have an uncertain poetic soul.

When we live in California before going to Disneyland I took my children to UCLA and told them one day maybe they would be students there. I always desired to study someplace abroad and now my internationally inexperienced daughter graduate really from UCLA as I promised her when she was seven years old.

I had given Major Plecho a contact address to my wife friends in the USA. Through them I received from his wife a letter from West Germany with sad news. With her and two children he had fled Czechoslovakia, but soon had died.

In the United States I fulfilled the promise I had given to my mother during the most difficult times of my life. As an adult I graduated from college with three degrees.

I lived in Rochester, N.Y., Oregon, Santa Monica and Culver City in California. Two of my children were born in this country. I was elected member of Phi Kappa Phi, and I cherish the Letter of Merit "for the superior quality of the thesis. You have demonstrated superior scholarship and have made very real to the expansion of Criminal Justice literature..." I suppose the thesis was worth the letter. I passed a strictly time controlled computer test and was accepted, in September 2006, to the International High IQ Society. For admission the Society require score that ranks the candidate among the top two per cent of the population.

One day in the library I noticed a large size book with title MAT. I thought it was a mathematic text. MAT stood for Miller Analogies Test. I took the book home and just because I encountered analogies test Online and at GRE test decades ago I tried several questions and later the whole test. While working on the test I discovered it was accepted under some circumstances by Mensa. The circumstances were score of ninety-eight percent or better on the supervised test. I was aware what the Society was and therefore did not try for membership. After some time I constantly answered close to ninety questions which was enough for university, nonetheless, about ten percent behind Mensa circumstances.

In one of the practice tests book for the Miller Analogies Test I noticed a warning in the form of the explanation that this test is a test the candidate never had taken before and never will. It consists of a hundred and twenty questions from which twenty are experimental and do not count. The enemy is not the questions, the enemy is time. The time is thirty second per question and was written by Marquise de Sade. The questions can be taken from approximately twenty-five fields, mathematics not omitted. The essence of the test consist of finding analogy to given words. To explain the test is nearly as difficult as to take it. For example, the preparation test confirmed what I and everybody else knows that pahoehoe is in Hawaian lava. No one should have problems with square root of minus one third. Not all questions are that hard: some are harder. At the test I was unusually calm: the test is required by some employers and by some universities as requirement to admission to the PhD program. I did not wanted go to school nor was I looking for job. I wanted to find out how much intelligence I have left after so long time spent in prison. I felt as if my brain was telling me not to worry, that there was nothing to it, that the test was a kids game.

I did not doubt my results would be above average but not over ninety-two percentiles. In order to see my abilities I registered for March 14,009 test. In the preparation I took approximately two hundred tests, each asking a hundred or hundred and twenty questions. It would be more than twenty thousand questions. Each of them contained three given terms and four terms from with I have to find the analogical word to one of the given terms. Before looking for the answer I had to match two terms of the given three. Each question containing seven terms simply means that I had to deal with one hundred and forty thousand words, most of them repeated many times since each test I took several times. On the market there’re are only about 60-70 tests available. I studied for months several hours a day of night. It is not my intent to shock the readers, I want only warn my potential followers and unbelievers that this form of slavery suicide is maybe not worth the effort. My twenty thousand questions did not help me at the actual test. Only one or two have I encountered in preparation, one of them from classics.

My tests taught me to manage the time, however. When towards the end of the test, the supervisor announced "five minutes", I looked on my watch and the wall clock, and then on my answer book. I had exactly ten questions to go. With thirty second per question to answer ten questions takes exactly five minutes.

My score was 99 percentile. I am sure no one in my age achieved this result, and I doubt anybody eighty years old took this test ever. For my success I am thankful before anybody and anything else to the generation of my ancestors, those generation preserved their genes they gave me as inheritance. Some influence had the environment, but if you live in a conservatory you need not necessary become Lind or Destin. Altogether more than sixteen years I have spent in prison. As a civilian I have spent four years in quarries and mines, and almost thirty years as a waiter. None of my jobs can be classified as conductive to learning.

In computer class in 2006 I was ashamed I did not know how to type, and also because I wanted to write history of my family, I learned to type. Beside computer class I took fingerprints class and investigation of crime scene-practically murder investigation. My average was 3.66, my age 80. On the basis of my MAT score I was offered membership in Mensa.

I am here for my mother waited when no one else did any more. My mother knew how to wait like nobody else. We have killed many deaths. I came home and no matter what day it has been, it must have been Sunday. "Because for a slave it is hard to die before he accomplishes his revenge" wrote Ivan Krasko on the end of his "Song of a slave." When I accomplished mine was when I accepted San Diego Mensa literary award in category of Unpublished Memoires.

This is what happened.