1954 Political Kidnapping of Štefan Kiripolský in Vienna, Part Two ©

Part Two

During his first captivity in Vienna, Soviet officers accused Kiripolský of carrying out espionage activities against the USSR. The Soviets interrogated him repeatedly regarding personnel of the CIC in Vienna. He was transferred to Prague, Czechoslovakia on September 11, 1954.

Kiripolský was in the Bubenec area of Prague for 16 or 18 months during which time the StB as well as the Soviet KGB interrogated him. Kiripolský was subjected to various methods of torture, including continuous nightlong interrogations.  He was placed in a small cell where he could not sit or lie down. From time to time his cell was filled with extremely hot air, which would suddenly be changed to extremely cold air.

On May 5, 1955 the Czechoslovak Attorney General accused Štefan Kiripolský of high treason and espionage. In the trial, which took place on July 27, 1955, at the Military Division of the Supreme Court, Štefan Kiripolský was condemned to the life sentence and his partner Helena Neumanova to five years prison. His prison sentence was later reduced to 25 years and then 15 years—presumably for providing the Czechoslovak intelligence service information about CIC and RFE. He was prepared for a show trial but was too mechanical in his answers and the idea was dropped.

A May 2, 1957, a small newspaper article appeared in a Swiss newspaper on the topic of prisoners of war in Czechoslovakia.  Included in the names of prisoners was one Štefan Kiripolský, “former co-worker of the Vienna office of the Munich radio station Radio Free Europe.”  This article caused a stir within RFE, and on June 12, 1957, the RFE security officer traveled to Vienna to meet Karl Reinoch, the article's source of information. 

Reinoch explained that he was a secretary in the Austrian Consulate General’s office in Bratislava.  On September 22, 1950 he was arrested on the street, taken to Prague, and placed in prison for investigative custody.  He was accused of espionage. The prison was in the Ruzyn section of Prague. He remained there for three months during which time eight different StB officers interrogated him.  He did not know their names and stated that until 1955, StB personnel were known only by a number.

Reinoch said he first met former RFE employee Štefan Kiripolský in May or June 1956 in Leopoldov prison. Kiripolský had been there since the spring of 1956. For three or four months they shared the same cell, and Kiripolský told him how he arrived there.  Kiripolský said that he had been employed by RFE in Vienna, and that he had an American chief in Vienna named Williams, who was not with RFE but with U.S. Intelligence. He mentioned that Williams spoke Slovak and had a cover name that Reinoch could not recall.

Kiripolský also said that he had been accused of’ sending two agents into Hungary, which he admitted to Reinoch as having done. One of them reportedly shot and killed a border guard while crossing the border and he, Kiripolský, also was charged with being involved with the murder.

Reinoch said that Kiripolský told him that while he was in jail in Prague, he was told he would probably be sentenced to death.  But that they would consider giving him a chance for a prison sentence if he agreed to make a statement against RFE and the CIC at a press conference.

Kiripolský agreed and was then taken to another area of Prague, where prisoners were wined, dined, and rested prior to making a public statement.  Those chosen to make statements were well briefed and rehearsed prior to appearing in public. Kiripolský said he learned his role so well that he became too mechanical in his speech, and the StB finally decided he would not make a very good impression. They sent him back to his prison in Prague. After this episode he was never again approached by the StB to make a press statement or to work for the StB in any capacity.

There was no further word on Kiripolský until Hungarian-born Tibor Karman visited the RFE Vienna office on April 13, 1965. Karman was the husband of journalist, Andrea Karman, the daughter of a former high-ranking Austrian civil servant. Mrs. Karman met Karman in Hungary, fell in love with him and tried to smuggle him out to the West via Czechoslovakia. 

All of the persons involved were caught, including Karman and an accomplice, believed to be Australian or British. They were sentenced to six months in jail.  Karman was returned to Hungary. As a result of direct intervention of then Austrian Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky in Budapest, in October or November 1964, Karman was allowed to leave Czechoslovakia.

Karman said that while he was in jail at Ilava, Slovakia, Karman met another prisoner: Kiripolský. According to Karman, Kiripolský looked hale and hearty. Kiripolský was then working in the Ilava prison hospital to get better food. 

Štefan Kiripolský was released from prison in the Prague Spring in May 1968. He never contacted the radios after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Štefan Kiripolský died on July 6, 1992, exactly 42 years after he crossed the Danube River in search of freedom. Helena Neumanova died on February 19, 2001.

Photograph courtesy of RFE/RL.

1954 Political Kidnapping of Štefan Kiripolský In Vienna, Part One ©

After World War Two until 1955, Vienna, Austria, was divided into five occupation zones between the Soviet Union, USA, UK and France, and with the First District (Inner City) being patrolled by military units of all four allied powers. Graham Greene wrote in his novella The Third Man:

At night it is just as well to stick to the Inner City or the zones of three of the Powers, though even there the kidnappings occur – such senseless kidnappings they sometimes seemed to us – a Ukrainian girl without a passport, an old man beyond the age of usefulness, sometimes, of course, the technicians or the traitor.

The Third Man film based on the novella is shown three times each week in Vienna, at the English-language movie theater Burgkino, which has shown it continuously for over thirty years--https://www.burgkino.at/movie/third-man, [Accessed January 2020]

Below we will look at one political kidnapping in Vienna and its connection to Radio Free Europe.

Štefan Kiripolský Story

Part One

During the night July 6-7, 1952, Štefan Kiripolský (born December 24, 1914 Palárikovo , Austria-Hungary, now Slovakia) and Helena Neumanova left their village in Czechoslovakia, crossed the Danube River in a small boat to Austria and settled in Vienna as refugees.

On December 1, 1952, Kiripolský started working as an “interviewer” at Radio Free Europe’s News and Information Service Field Office in Vienna. More ominously, he also started working with the United States Military Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), helping debrief others, who had escaped from behind the Iron Curtain.

Unknown to Kiripolský, the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service (StB) had agents in place in Vienna, who were reporting on his activities, e.g., one agent code-named Cloves (Hribicek), started working for the StB at RFE’s office at the end of November 1952. The StB started an interest file on Kiripolsky in December 1952.

In January 1953, the chief of the First Department of the Intelligence Regional Administration in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Pafco and his second-in-command Captain Vlastimil Kroupa wrote up a plan to kidnap Štefan Kiripolský. In order to accomplish this task, a three-member team was expected to travel to Vienna, and the operation was to be carried out through cooperation with the Soviet counterintelligence service. Then Deputy Minister of National Security, Prchal did not approve the plan and it was dropped at that time. Nevertheless, surveillance of Kiripolský’s activities continued.

On July 17, 1953, at 5 PM, Guenther Schuettler was kidnapped (apprehended?) in Vienna by two men, who drove him to the Bellaria section of Vienna, where he was held for four days and interrogated by Soviet officers.  Of primary concern of the Soviets was Štefan Kiripolský, who worked in the RFE Vienna office and also with the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corp (CIC) in Vienna.

After 4 days, he agreed to work for the Soviet Intelligence Service and arrange that Kiripolský would “fall into Soviet hands” for which Schuettler would receive a bonus of 10,000 Schillings.Schuettler was also a member of the Nationale Liga and the “Freikorps Donauland”, and agreed to inform the Soviets about both organizations.

Instead Schuettler reported to the Austrian State Police what happened to him. He did meet with a Soviet contact and was driven around the Soviet occupied district while giving some information. Another meeting was scheduled at the East Railway station in Vienna but Schuettler did not show up and there was no further contact with the Soviet intelligence service. 

The West German intelligence agency Gehlen Organization learned of this and reported to the CIA Chief of Base in Pullach (outside Munich). That office in turn notified the CIA Chief of Station in Vienna, with the request to confirm that Kiripolský worked for RFE and the CIC and that perhaps Kiripolský should be warned that he was a target of a possible kidnapping.

On August 21, 1954, Kiripolský wanted to go on vacation with Neumanova in the southern part of Austria, which meant he would have to travel through the Soviet occupied zone of Austria via Wiener Neustadt. He mentioned it to his supervisor, who advised him not to go.  In spite of the advice, they left for vacation. In Wiener Neustadt, A Russian military officer stopped Kiripolský and Neumanova at a railway checkpoint and took them from the train. The Russian officer was apparently expecting him to come through that point at about that particular tine.  Several other Russian soldiers were present. They put Kiripolský into a Russian-made car and took him to Baden, Austria -- still within the Soviet Zone. Neumanova was transported in a different vehicle.

There was widespread newspaper coverage in the United States that included statements from the RFE manager in Vienna, Russel Hill, who was quoted as saying "There was little doubt that one of RFE's top Czechoslovak employees had been kidnapped by the Russians." Another article reported, "The kidnapping was the first case of direct action against the anti-Communist broadcasting organisation." Radio Free Europe terminated Kiripolsky’s employment on August 31, 1954, because: “He did not return to work after vacation, actually defected or kidnapped to CSSR.”