Yuri Marin, Code Name "Kit": From Defector to KGB Denouncer of Radio Liberty ©

In February 1966, a 125-foot-long Soviet intelligence gathering ship, which looked like a fishing trawler, was first spotted at the mouth of the Klamath River heading south near Eureka, California. On February 16, 1966, newspapers carried an Associated Press story along with a photograph of the ship named “Deflektor.” One newspaper headline read, “Navy Watches Russ Trawler off California.” The ship was in international waters, i.e., beyond the 3-mile limit. A Navy spokesman said, “She has every right to be where she is.”

On board the “Deflektor” was Yuri Mikailovich Pyatakov, born on October 15, 1929 in Irkutsk, USSR, where he attended elementary and high schools. In 1948, he entered the military school for foreign languages, specializing in Korean. Later he attended the Institute of Foreign Languages in Irkutsk, specializing in English. He served eleven years in the Red Army, reaching the grade of Captain. In 1966, he apparently was an officer on board the ship.

On February 18, 1966, Pytakov jumped overboard and was picked up by a U.S. destroyer, which was then engaged in surveillance of the "Deflektor." 

He was brought ashore and debriefed about his and the ships activities until March 1966. Because his bona fides appeared to be excellent, and a polygraph examination tended to confirm his credibility, he was granted permanent residence in the U.S. in July 1966.  He then used the name Yuri Michael Marin and was relocated to Washington, D.C.

As the story goes, the KGB operation began, when Marin was in Washington. He was "spotted" and recognized by a Soviet Officer from the Soviet Embassy. Apparently, there were difficult "control problems,” either surveillance or in finding Marin's residence and place of work. The KGB headquarters ordered the KGB Residency in Washington to make a direct approach to Marin.

The first contact took place in a Washington D.C. art museum. Marin agreed to continue the contacts. By the third or fourth meeting, a counterintelligence officer was meeting Marin at his home. Afterwards they moved the relationship to clandestine meetings that lasted for about a year. He was given the code name “Kit.”

In September 1967, Marin was hired by the U.S. Army Russian Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany -- about an hour’s ride south of Munich. During his briefings by U.S. Army personnel. Marin reportedly said he was warned that he faced execution if he ever returned to the Soviet Union.  To his Army colleagues he appeared to accept this as fact and was not intimidated by it. From Garmisch-Partenkirchen, he made frequent trips to Munich, apparently for personal reasons.

Marin reportedly was run in place by the KGB representation in East Berlin-Karlhorst.

In May 1970, he became considerably upset when he learned that he would not be granted U.S. citizenship in 1971 after the five—year period normal for regular applicants. His former membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made it mandatory that he wait ten years before naturalization. He requested that a special private bill in his behalf be introduced in Congress, but that was refused.

          

Radio Liberty (RL) then hired him in June 1971 as an announcer and occasional scriptwriter. A year later, he married a Radio Liberty employee. Sometime in 1973, he again sought to work at the U.S. Army’s Russian Institute, but this time he was turned down for unknown reasons. At the KGB Direction, Marin continued working for Radio Liberty.  

Marin reportedly was well paid for his services: KGB had set up a Moscow Bank Account for him and paid circa 3,000-4,000 Rubles monthly into it.

In 1973, Directorate K changed its objective of the “KIT Operation” to "active measures" to expose of Radio Liberty as a CIA "tool." One KGB section also began planning the exfiltration or ”redefection” of Marin to USSR via Austria and Budapest. Marin was scheduled to be transferred to work for Radio Liberty in New York in November 1973, but he instead departed Munich in his own automobile on October 14, 1973 for an unknown destination.

He thereafter communicated with his wife in Munich using various addresses in the USSR.  

The December 5, 1973, issue of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia reported that Marin had recently returned to the USSR and "wished to share with Soviet Society 'information' he had acquired about Radio Liberty activities." He did not appear publicly and there was no mention further of him until February 1976, when Radio Moscow reported about a article in his name that appeared in the newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta, "Radio Liberty: Who is Who and What is What." Numerous Radio Liberty employees were mentioned by name. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow reported on the article, with this comment: "The article intended implications for the Soviet reader seems to be that listening to RL is itself close to a treasonous act. The article's length, and the strong language it contains suggest that Soviet authorities continue to be seriously concerned over RL's impact within the USSR."

Marin published a book on his deeds as a KGB Agent in Radio Liberty. Other articles under Marin’s name were published in the USSR, wherein various "CIA spies" at Radio Liberty were exposed. Photographs of employees and photocopies of various Radio Liberty memoranda also appeared in the Soviet media.

In addition to denouncing Radio Liberty and the CIA, in one of Marin’s television interviews he said that his mission had been to penetrate the “U.S. spy school” in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. And he could confirm the “anti-Soviet” nature of the school that trained “American espionage agents.” 

At a multilateral Meeting of the East Bloc Intelligence Services in Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, February 12-13, 1976, intelligence officers exchanged experiences on the active measures taken and being prepared against both Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. KGB General Oleg Kalugin chaired the meeting and made an introductory speech.

One of the agreed upon points was:

Examine the possibilities and conditions of holding a public tribunal against Liberty and FREE EUROPE on the territory of a socialist country. For this tribunal, former employees of these centers will be used who were ordered back from the West (CZECHOWICZ, LJACH, SMOLINSKI, -- Peoples Republic of Poland, MARIN – USSR, MINARIK—Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and others). Also former employees of the radio stations, selected citizens who came under influence of the radio stations, as well as by using documentary materials from all socialist intelligence services will be used.

                                      

In 1977, Marin was featured in two propaganda books printed in Moscow that “exposed” CIA activities at Radio Liberty: A Dangerous Game: CIA and the Mass Media and Caught in the Act. He was also mentioned in the 1983 book published in Moscow, The CIA in the Dock: Soviet Journalists on International Terrorism.

Yuri Marin reportedly resettled in Latvia or Estonia and was not seen or used in any propaganda campaign afterwards. He never surfaced after the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union; his fate is unknown.

Murder Attempt on Vladimir Kostov in Paris, France, on August 26, 1978 ©

Vladimir Kostov

Below we will briefly look at the murder attempt on Vladimir Kostov, a Bulgarian émigré living in Paris, ten days before the attack on Georgi Markov in London.

Vladimir Kostov arrived in Paris in April 1974 as the Paris correspondent of Bulgarian Television and Radio. He was also an experienced intelligence officer with the rank of Major. On 27 July 1977, he and his wife Natalya sought and received seeking political asylum in France.

Immediately, the First Main Directorate (FMD) of the Bulgarian Secret Service began an investigation into his defection. Kostov’s code name “Krastev”, which was used while he was working as an intelligence officer in Paris, was changed to “Judas”.

On 5 May 1978, a Sofia Military Court in closed session sentenced Kostov to death and his wife Natalia to six and a half years in prison as “traitors to the Motherland.” According to Bulgarian journalist Hristo Hristov, the FMD appointed a Bulgarian agent living in Algeria to perform the operation to liquidate “Judas”. The agent had been trained for operations in Turkey, but now he was charged with the mission to carry out the death sentence.

After doing freelance work for Radio Free Europe’s Bulgarian Service, Kostov became a staff member in the RFE Paris news bureau on 1 August 1978. He was scheduled for transfer to the Munich headquarters of the radio station in October as a full-time employee.

Vladimir Kostov describes in his memoirs The Bulgarian Umbrella what happened to him in Paris about 2 PM on 26 August 1978:

There were crowds of people in the Metro corridors. A few seconds before stepping off the escalator, I felt a sharp pain in the small of my back, just above my waist. At the same moment, I heard a sound like the rattle of a stone hitting the ground. Natalya heard it, too, without suspecting that anything had happened to me. My first thought was that I had been struck by a stone slung with great force, as though from a catapult.

In the 2006 television documentary, Umbrella Assassin, Vladimir Kostov takes the viewer through what happened as he was leaving the Metro station:

Two hours later, Kostov and his wife went to the Nanterre Surgery. Kostov was examined by the doctor on duty, who reportedly told them, “I can’t feel any lump in the place where you think you were hit. I suppose some insect - a wasp perhaps - got in under your shirt”. Kostov asked about the possibility that someone had deliberately attacked him. The French doctor skeptically said, “It’s quite obvious that you have not been shot or stabbed. As for poison, it’s more than two hours now, so you’d either be dead or critically ill. Go home. If it gets worse, come back and see me”.

Over the next forty-eight hours Kostov’s condition worsened: he had a high fever and the right side of his back was swollen. On Monday, he was still in pain and went to another hospital and another doctor told him that his wound was not an insect bite but the cause remained unknown. The swelling went down and the pain stopped.

 

Kostov, who had remained in close contact with French authorities since his defection, immediately reported the incident to the police on Monday, 28 August. An officer told him after their first analysis that, although they knew of the existence of more than 3,000 different kinds of toxins, it appeared they were dealing with something completely new or different. Kostov has been told he would receive a final analysis from the French police by 15 September. He described the man as tall, athletic-looking, and not French. An officer made a composite drawing.

On 11 September 1978, Georgi Markov died in London. Radio Free Europe’s Bulgarian Service in Munich called Vladimir Kostov and told him the tragic news. The following day he called a friend at BBC, who told him that Scotland Yard was investigating. Kostov learned that as Markov lay dying, he repeatedly said agents of the Bulgarian Intelligence Service had poisoned him. Because of his intelligence background, Kostov had maintained contact with French intelligence officers. He called French intelligence authorities, DST, which then started an investigation to determine if the attack on Kostov and the attack on Markov were related. DST immediately assigned Kostov twenty-four-hour protection and contacted other interested French government agencies, as well as British authorities.

positive image of pellet

On 15 September 1978, Kostov said on Radio Free Europe: “Yesterday and today I underwent a medical examination. The x-ray photograph showed that in the place of the injury between the skin and ribs there is a small pellet of about two millimeters in diameter”

Kostov wrote what happened next:

On the 25th September 1978, the two Scotland Yard inspectors arrived in Paris. They contacted the surgeon who was to perform the operation on me. The next day my wife and I went to the surgical clinic on “L’Avenue de la Republique”. There were two Englishmen waiting for us there, as well as representatives of the French criminal police, a total of ten persons. The French police inspector who was to be present in the operating theatre put on a white gown. The radiographer localized the position of the pellet and gave me a local anesthetic. The surgeon excised from my flesh a piece as big as a thumb, which he placed immediately in a glass dish." 

Immediately following the operation, one Scotland Yard detective flew back to England and submitted to Dr. Robin Keeley of the Scotland Yard forensic laboratory the small metallic object and skin sample that had been removed from Kostov’s body. According to Dr. Keeley, the pellet from Kostov matched that taken from Markov: 152mm (0.060 inches) in diameter, an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium.

 In a 1978 statement to Scotland Yard, Dr. David Gall said: "There is some evidence that the blood of Mr.Kostov, Markov’s compatriot contained small amounts of antibody to ricin, consistent with the administration of a small amount of ricin sometime previously."

In an interview for the 2012 documentary film Silenced, Dr. Christropher Green said, "Kostov's pellet when surgically removed by a qualified dermatologist in Paris was dissected to be found inside two facial planes, where it was inaccessible to blood circulation.. it had been determined the waxy material was found in a quantitative laboratory test to melt at exactly 98.6 degrees. In Markov it was in muscle and fat, heavy with arteriolar blood supply and hot; between connective tissue layers there are no arterioles, 

it remained cool. The wax didn't all melt and the pellet still had sufficient wax to be tested…"

Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev pardoned Kostov in 1990.

For more information

Vladimir Kostov, The Bulgarian Umbrella: The Soviet Direction and Operations of the Bulgarian Secret Service in Europe, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1988

Kostov re-enacts the physical attack in the television documentary Secrets of the Dead: Umbrella Assassin can be viewed at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8985637335577767956

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.