Milada Horakova was put to death at age 49 by hanging in Pankrac Prison, Prague on June 27, 1950. Of the 248 persons executed for political reasons in Communist Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, she was the only woman executed. Today she is a national heroine in the Czech Republic, and June 27th is the official day of “Commemoration for the Victims of the Communist Regime.”
The National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) published a graphic booklet in the United States with the title Unconquered in 1951 that portrayed a May 31 – June 8, 1950 show trial of Milada Horáková and twelve co–defendants. They had been charged with espionage and treason. The dramatic cover of the “comic book” is in classic early Cold War style and reads:
Social worker, lawyer, humanitarian, enemy of dictatorship, devoted to social justice and equal rights – Milada Horakova fought ... and died ... for a better way of life for all. Her resistance to the Nazis and the Communists has already become part of the history of the Czechoslovakian fight for freedom.
Below, we will briefly look at the remarkable life and tragic death of Milada Horakova.
Who was Milada Horakova?
Milada Horakova was born Milada Kralova on December 25, 1901 in Prague, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In one all-girl’s high school, she participated in an anti-war demonstration on May 1, 1918, when she threw roses over a wall into a soldier’s camp, and was expelled from school. She then entered another all-girl’s school and graduated in 1921.
After high school, she joined the Czechoslovak Red Cross and began studying law at Charles University. She graduated in 1926. Her first job was as director of the Prague City Council’s welfare department, Social Services authority. She dealt with social issues such as public housing and unemployment but she was also concerned with the welfare of unmarried and divorced mothers.
She then joined the Czechoslovak Nationalist Socialist Party and became active in women’s rights movement and social welfare groups for the young. In 1925, the Czech Women’s National Council became an international organization and Milada traveled to various cities in Europe, representing Czech women. She married Bohuslav Horak in February 1927, and they had one daughter, Jana, in 1933.
German Occupation of Czechoslovakia
After the Germans invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, she was forced from her job in the Municipal authority. She and her husband joined the anti-Nazi resistance movement. She was also a co-writer of the Charter of Czech Resistance, a document that outlined the goals for free Czechoslovakia and the aim of the Resistance movement.
The Gestapo arrested them on July 2, 1940. She spent the next two years in a Gestapo prisons in Prague and was subjected to torture and harsh interrogations. In 1942, she was transferred to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. In 1944 she was sentenced to death in Dresden but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. She was sent to the women’s prison in Aichach, Bavaria and was eventually freed by the U.S. army in May 1945.
The same month, she returned to Prague, reunited her family and joined the National Socialist Party. She was elected to Parliament and continued working for women, including joining the Council of Czechoslovak Women, in which she was elected the chairwoman. In 1948, President Benes awarded her two medals, in recognition of her anti-Nazi activities.
Communist Take over of Czechoslovakia
After the Communists coup-d’état in February 1948, she resigned from Parliament and was expelled from Council of Czechoslovak women. She then joined an opposition group and maintained contact with democratic leaders who fled to the West. Friends encourage her to leave Czechoslovakia, but she refused and helped set up safe houses and escape routes for others, who wanted to leave the country.
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Prison Photos
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On September 27, 1949, Bohuslav Horak and Milada Horakova were walking in downtown Prague. They parted and she went to her office. When he returned home, he saw the secret police in their garden. He rushed to warn his wife, but it was too late -- she had already been arrested in her office. Family and friends then hid him for about two months. The sister of Milada Horakova then took care of their daughter Jana.
On December 1, 1949, the Simak family helped Bohuslav Horak, a prince of the Bohemian Lobkowicz noble family and one of their cousins escape Czechoslovakia across the Iron Curtain to West Germany. He then spent two years as a "displaced person" at Camp Valka, near Nuremberg. He heard about his wife's execution over BBC radio. Bohuslav Horak eventually immigrated to the United States and died there in 1976. He never went public with details of how he escaped.
Milada Horakova and the other political prisoners were reportedly beaten, starved and forced to remain standing waist deep in cold water for long periods of time. After falling asleep from exhaustion in very small cells without lights or heat, the political prisoners were continually awakened at night. Threats were made to their families. Eventually, they psychologically broke down under the harsh interrogations and signed a confession of their “crimes.” Three months before the trial began, the defendants had been sufficiently brainwashed to memorize the prepared scripts for the trial, including the prosecutors’ questions and the answers to them.
The Trial
On May 31, 1950, the first political show trial in Czechoslovakia began in Prague, with Milada Horakova called as the first witness. Little evidence was needed and presented by the prosecutors. Those on trial were accused of being “disgusting traitors,” “American spies” and even “international terrorists preparing political murders motivated by class hatred.” The trial was covered by state radio and filmed for government newsreels. Although there was daily radio coverage, not all parts of the trial were broadcast. Czechoslovak Communist Party propagandists later published carefully selected excerpts and re-written dialogues from the trial as a Grey Book that “proved” the existence of a “international conspiracy motivated by imperialists and their Czechslovak helpers.”
During the trial, Milada Horakova could be seen in the packed courtroom standing tall and straight, while she spoke in a quiet yet firm voice. She did not always follow her “script” that was prepared for the trial, much to the consternation of the prosecutors. Most of the film coverage of Milada Horakova’s testimony was not shown to the public, as it was unusable for Communist propaganda. Here is a brief film excerpt from the show trial:
After eight days, the “jury” returned the guilty verdicts on June 8, 1950. Four of the defendants were sentenced to death, four received life sentences, and five received sentences ranging from fifteen to twenty-eight years in prison. Czech historian Karel Kaplan has written that the trial was a milestone because it was the first show trial in Czechoslovakia and the first one prepared directly by Soviet Union. In effect, the trial was meant to destroy any political opposition and deter all possible anti-Communist resistance.
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Uncensored excerpts from Milada Horakova’s testimony at the show trial were discovered in 2005 and can be viewed today, with English subtitles, at
On the evening before she was hanged, Milada Horakova was allowed a 15-minute visit with her daughter, her sister Vera and Vera’s husband. She had written her daughter a letter that was not delivered but published in 1990 in a small book: "Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody ... but don't let it defeat you. Decide to fight. Have courage and clear goals, and you will win over life." In the pre-dawn hours of 27 June 1950, reportedly Milada Horakova’s final words were: “I fall, I fall, I lost this battle, I leave honorably. I love this country, I love these people, build prosperity for them. I leave without hatred for you. I wish you this, I wish you this.“
After her death, she was cremated and, reportedly, her ashes were put into an unmarked common grave in the Prague Strasnice graveyard, but they have never been found. Today there is a gravestone with a bronze bust -- a symbolic monument to her -- in the famous Vysehrad Cemetery in Prague.
Plans were made to smuggle Jana Horakova out of Czechoslovakia in October or November 1951 through West Berlin, with the assistance of a courier named Frantisek Kroc. Kroc was arrested in mid-November 1951. He was tried and sentenced in January 1951 to life imprisonment, which was reduced in 1955 to 25 years.
During Prague Spring in 1968, Milada Horakova was partially “rehabilitated” when her sentence was struck down and her daughter Jana only then was allowed to leave Czecho-slovakia for the United States. The Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 prevented any further legal action in Milada Horakova’s show trial.
On November 14, 2006, at the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C., Milada Horakova’s daughter, Jana Horakova-Kanska, accepted the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom Award from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation for her mother.
During her later visit to Prague in 2007, Jana Horakova-Kanska presented a copy of the NCFE “comic book” to the National Archive in Prague. The “comic book” was described in 1951 as, "The story of a courageous Czechoslovakian patriot, Milada Horakova, who, despite imprisonment under both Nazi and Communist dictatorships, was a true defender of Democracy and sacrificed her life for the principles of liberty." Unconquered sold for 15 cents, 12 cents if ordered in a batch of 100 copies.
In 2007, former prosecutor 87-year old Ludmila Brozova-Polednova was put on trial at the Prague Municipal Court for her participation in the 1950 trial and death of Milada Horakova. She was the only surviving prosecutor. Part of the evidence presented at this trial included films of the trial that showed her loudly haranguing Milada Horakova. The court heard that she witnessed the hanging and reportedly said to the executioner, “Don’t break her neck in the noose” – “Suffocate the bitch - and the others too”. One of the guards at the execution testified that Brozova-Polednova “laughed out loud” as Milada Horakova was pronounced dead. Ludmilla Brozova-Polednova was found guilty, sentenced to eight years but eventually the conviction was overruled on the grounds of the law’s statute of limitations.
The NCFE graphic booklet was part of an exhibition "Za Svobodu! / Be Free!" that ran from November 17, 2009 to July 6, 2010, at the former RFE/RL headquarters in Prague -- now known as the National Museum's New Building. The Unconquered panels from the booklet with Czech translations can be viewed as a slide show at
http://kultura.idnes.cz/foto.aspr=literatura&c=A060419_110526_show_aktual_kot (Last viewed April 2013)
The last panel shows Milada Horakova’s feet bound and hanging, with the words: “The Communists did what the Nazis never dared to do. On June 27, 1950 Milada Horakova was hanged.”
A documentary on the escape of Bohuslav Horak from Czechoslovakia was shown on Czech TV in 2006. A summary of this television documentary was broadcast by Radio Prague on October 26, 2006.
An opera based on the trial premiered in Prague in April 2008, with the title "Tomorrow Will."
Prague Radio reported on December 21, 2010:
An opera based on the trial premiered in Prague in April 2008, with the title "Tomorrow Will."
Prague Radio reported on December 21, 2010:
President Vaclav Klaus has pardoned Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, a former communist prosecutor who is serving a six year sentence for her part in the judicial murder of democratic politician Milada Horaková in the hardline 1950s. Ludmila Brožová Polednová, who is now 89, is the last living participant in one of the most notorious show trials of communist-era Czechoslovakia and is the sole person tried in connection with the murder. In 2007 was found guilty and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. This sentence was overturned, but the following year she faced another trial in which she was also found guilty and sentenced to six years. After a series of unsuccessful appeals, Brožová-Polednová became the Czech Republic's oldest prisoner when in March 2009 when she was incarcerated at a special geriatric facility at the Světlá nad Sázavou Prison in central Bohemia. Her case has evoked mixed reactions with some people pleading clemency in view of her advanced age.
