Nikita Khrushchev and Radio Free Europe, Part 1 ©

In September 1959, two months after his famed “kitchen debate” with Vice President Richard M. Nixon in Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States. Below is a film of Nixon and Khrushchev meeting in Moscow.

Khrushchev spent 13 days traveling around the country: New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Iowa, Pittsburgh and Washington DC. In New York City, on September 17, 1959, there was a large rally at Carnegie Hall protesting his visit to the United States. An estimated 2,500 protesters wearing black-arm bands and carrying black flags jammed Carnegie Hall. 

The rally was erroneously billed as being sponsored by Crusade for Freedom. Crusade headquarters had to put out a disclaimer notice to the press on that day: “The Crusade for Freedom is not sponsoring any rally or demonstration regarding the Khrushchev visit.”

On October 8, 1959, Crusade for Freedom sent out a notice to Crusade supporters giving some details of how the Radio Free Europe handled the Khrushchev visit:

From the moment of his arrival until the moment of his return, Mr. Khrushchev’s activities were the subject of on-the-spot reportage by an accredited RFE correspondents traveling with the press party.... The RFE stations were able to present a rounded picture of the Khrushchev visit—a picture that included the boos, the pickets and signs encountered along the way, as well as the applause; the coolness of the Washington and New York receptions; the hostile questions at various meetings.

        

In short, all the things which the Soviet and satellite press and radio were carefully leaving out of their coverage.

        

We can take real pride in the service rendered to the captive peoples by Radio Free Europe in these extraordinary times.

Ten million dollars was the stated goal of the 1960 Crusade for Freedom campaign. To try and reach this goal, the Advertising Council launched another major media campaign, including one newspaper advertisement, which read, in part:

  “Nyet” is the Russian word for “no.” To 76 million oppressed people behind the Iron Curtain in captive nations, “nyet” is a hated word. “Nyet” to freedom of speech, “nyet” to freedom of the press, “nyet” to the right to know the truth, “nyet” to all the freedom we Americans take for granted. 

  But freedom cannot be taken for granted.  It has always been won by toil, money and blood and must be zealously guarded.

  Radio Free Europe helps you protect YOUR freedom by bringing the truth and a glimpse of freedom to the peoples who live in the dark world of communist lies.

July 25, 1953: Riding the Czech “Freedom Tank” through the Iron Curtain ©

Freedom Tank at RFE in Munich

The Iron Curtain, with rows of barbed wire, armed patrols, land mines and guard towers, did not stop the flow of persons who were determined in finding ways to "escape" the “Communist-dominated” countries of East Europe. 

One daring and ingenious method was crashing through the Iron Curtain in a “Freedom Tank.” The episode was then used to rally Americans behind the Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe. After two years of planning and preparation, on July 25, 1953, a World War Two German “armored car,” covered with foliage for camouflage, driven by Vaclav Uhlik, and carrying seven passengers, rolled over three rows of barbed wire of the Iron Curtain near the Bavarian town of Waldmuenchen, along the Czechoslovakia-German border. 

Vaclav Uhlik, his wife and two children, two former Czech soldiers Walter Hora and Vaclav Krejciri, Josef Pisarik, and Libuse Cloud (nee Hrdonkova) were in the vehicle. 

The “armored car” was described as a ““Freedom Tank”,” because the sheet metal armor had been on it in such a way that, at first glance from a distance, it did resemble a Czecho-slovak army vehicle. Czech border guards saw the vehicle, but, apparently, they were so surprised but its actions they did not shoot at it or otherwise attempt to prevent the escape. The eight passengers were taken by German police and handed over to American military authorities, for processing as “refugees.”  

Where the Iron Curtain was pierced

The August 3, 1953, issue of Time magazine carried an article about the “Freedom Tank” that was entitled “The Wonderful Machine” and described the escape:

Sleepy police patrols in Pilsen hardly glanced at it. By 5 a.m. the car had reached the barbed-wire border area. Vaclav wrenched the wheel, lurched off the road and into the wire barrier. Czech border guards stood by, mouths agape, as the machine snorted through the wire and crossed into West Germany. None fired, or even raised a Tommy gun. The car rumbled westward for several miles before West German police caught up with it

Carl Koch of Radio Free Europe reportedly negotiated the purchase of the vehicle and the “tank” was delivered to the Radio Free Europe broadcast center in Munich, which broadcast the story of the escape of the refugees. 

The “Freedom Tank” was then sent to the United States in September 1953.

On display in Washington, D.C.

The “Freedom Tank” was delivered to the Washington meeting of the Crusade for Freedom and American Heritage Foundation organizers in October 1953, attended by over 400 delegates. 

A Paramount Pictures newsreel, released October 23, 1953, covered the events of the meeting and at one point showed some of those who attended the meeting looking intently at the “Freedom Tank”. Audiences in movie theaters heard Jackson Beck, the film’s narrator, solemnly proclaim:

This symbol of resistance to Kremlin tyranny was constructed by Vaclav Uhlik, a Czech mechanic. For three years, Mr. Uhlik listened to Radio Free Europe broadcasts and from them took courage and hope while he worked patiently and in secret to build this vehicle in which he and seven others dashed across the frontier to freedom. Behind the iron curtain are seventy million Vaclav Uhliks to whom this crusade for freedom is the messenger of the Lord.

Vaclav Uhlik, his family and the other passengers went to the United States in December 1953. Bill Watson, narrating a Paramount Pictures newsreel showing their arrival at New York's Idlewild airport, said:

Arriving in New York from Frankfurt, Germany, seven Czechoslovak refugees are ready to participate in the fund raising campaign for Radio Free Europe, whose broadcasts sustained their hope and courage. They crashed through the iron curtain last summer in a fake armored car in a daring escape plan.

They newly-arrived refugees were settled in Springfield, Massachusetts, with the assistance of the American Heritage Foundation, which financially supported the families. They were able to supplement their income through television appearances and newspaper and magazine interviews. 

During the Crusade for Freedom newspaper campaign, Vaclav Uhlik was quoted in Advertising Council advertisements, “People believe RFE broadcasts like the Bible.”

Ed Sullivan tv show

The “escapees” appeared as “heroes” on American television shows and numerous newspaper and magazine articles were featured in the Crusade for Freedom’s campaign, showing them before the RFE microphone. 

There was even a Crusade publicity photograph with television personality Ed Sullivan and the Uhlik family posing with the “tank” -- The Uhlik family had appeared on Ed Sullivan’s popular Sunday-night CBS national television program.

During a Crusade for Freedom parade in New York, on January 21, 1954, the tank broke down during the planned 15-mile drive from the Bronx to the City Hall in Manhattan.  The problem was a radiator leak and Vaclav Uhlik and Waler Hora, his fellow Czech escapee, fixed it to the sound of newspaper photographer's flash bulbs. There were other problems and finally the motor just stopped running. It had to be towed to Times Square, but by then it was too late for the final leg of the trip to the City Hall.  

One newspaper carried the story with the headline, “Home-Made Czech Tank Meets Waterloo in Bronx.” For the remainder of the nation-wide tour, the “Freedom Tank” was placed on a flatbed truck with a poster, “Czech “Freedom Tank” Escaped from Iron Curtain. Support Crusade for Freedom.”

Americans were encouraged to sign Freedom Scrolls showing their continuing support for the Crusade and Radio Free Europe. A large empty telephone cable reel was also on the flatbed truck and was used as a “short snorter” to tape, glue, or somehow connect the Freedom Scrolls together and roll them around it. For example, on February 22, 1954, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, the “Freedom Tank” was on display for a few hours. American Legion volunteers pasted together and attached 80 Freedom Scrolls with 6000 signatures (75 on each scroll) to Scrolls from other cities that already were wrapped around the cable reel.

On Tuesday evening, January 12, 1954, the CBS television network aired a 30-minute drama entitled "The Scrap Iron Curtain." The drama, part of the CBS "Suspense" series, was written by Reginald Lawrence and stared Bart Burns as Vaclav Uhlik. 

The program's preview description read: "Dramatization of the true story of Vaclav Uhlik, a Czech machinist who built and armed car and last July transported his wife, two children and four friends to the town of Waldmuenchen in the Western Zone of  Germany." The program was "presented in conjunction with Radio Free Europe." Another preview description read, "Dramatic documentary account of eight Czechs, prisoners of the Communists behind the Iron Curtain, who made a fantastically bold dash for freedom in a homemade armored car. Political melodrama, written for the Crusade for Freedom program, packs considerable excitement."

In Lima, Ohio, Pangles,"Lima's Leading Food Market", combined sponsorship of a Crusade for Freedom advertisement with one for its store in the February 19, 1954, local newspaper edition. On February 26, 1954, the "Freedom Tank" arrived in Lima, Ohio. Pangles sponsored another advertisement with a copy of the Freedom Scroll, and these words:

it's at PANGLES - Tonight 6 p.m. Famous FREEDOM TANK. SIGN THIS SCROLL. See and hear the local persons who will participate in this big program and history making event!

For the 1956 Crusade campaign, the Advertising Council produced a two recording set for radio stations in the United States. One was a 15 minute radio “dramatic playlet” entitled “The Tank that Jan built,” narrated by famed actor Vincent Price and co-starring Laurene Tuttel and Paul Frees. The second recording was that of personal appeals from Hollywood stars Walter Brennan, Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, Pat O’Brien, Jimmy Steward, Robert Stack, Barbara Stanwyck and Dick Powell, plus television stars Art Linkletter, Dinah Shore and Jack Webb.

The "Freedom Tank" was on display for years at the Ford Museum in Detroit, Michigan, before it was sold to a local farmer. Military vehicle collector Jim Gilmore in Pennsylvania now owns the “Freedom Tank," which is currently located in the state of Michigan.

The photograph of where the "Freedom Tank" crashed through the Iron Curtain  is taken from an album of the Czech Border guards entitled "The Tactic of the Enemy" that is now in the collection of the Czech police in Prague.

Other photographs of "Freedom Tank" courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Collection, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Film clip taken from a 1953 newsreel.

Vaclav Uhlik died in 1977.

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Unconquered: The Amazing Life and Death of Milada Horakova ©

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.

Prison Photos 

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.

Two Soviet “advisors” named Lichachov and Makarov arrived in 1949 to train Czechoslovak secret policemen (StB) in methods of investigation and interrogation, based on the show trials in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. They had traveled from Budapest, Hungary, where they had “assisted” in the show trial of Laszlo Rajk, former Minister of Interior and former Minister of Foreign Affairs,  September 16 - 24, 1949.

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.

Einstein Appeal

President Klement Gottwald confirmed the judgment of the court, despite international appeals from Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. The West generally remained silent, until the NCFE publication in 1951.

Uncensored excerpts from Milada Horakova’s testimony at the show trial were discovered in 2005 and can be viewed today, with English subtitles, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cJZerPi4I0&feature=related

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:

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.