Karel Truxa was the railroad stationmaster as the Czech town of Cheb. He had been sent to a labor camp for five months for giving refuge to two men who were hiding from the Communist secret police.
Konvalinka and Truxa had been warned by Vaclav Trobl, a former policeman, that they were under investigation for "underground" activities: Trobl had been interrogated for three day, learned of the investigation, and upon release from custody, went to Konvlinka and Truxa with the warning. Trobl, his wife, and son were aboard the train.
The day before the escape, he rode his motorcycle to the Asch freight yards and unseen threw a switch so that any train that came over that particular track would be diverted onto a spur leading to the Czech border that had not been used since before the Communist coup d’état in 1948. Then Truxa went to Pilsen to wait for the next morning's Prague-Asch express that he knew would be piloted by Konvalinka.
Konvalinka and Truxa had been warned by Vaclav Trobl, a former policeman, that they were under investigation for "underground" activities: Trobl had been interrogated for three day, learned of the investigation, and upon release from custody, went to Konvlinka and Truxa with the warning. Trobl, his wife, and son were aboard the train.
The day before the escape, he rode his motorcycle to the Asch freight yards and unseen threw a switch so that any train that came over that particular track would be diverted onto a spur leading to the Czech border that had not been used since before the Communist coup d’état in 1948. Then Truxa went to Pilsen to wait for the next morning's Prague-Asch express that he knew would be piloted by Konvalinka.
As the train approached Asch, it did not slow down. Instead, Konvalinka pushed the throttle all the way forward and the train sped past the station platform, through the freight yards and into the unused track. whose switch Truska had set the day before.
In an exclusive interview for The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (NCSML), Karel Ruml describes his heroic experiences on the train:
I stood there with my back against the handbrake, hoping to make it invisible, and sort of studying the people on board, most of whom were actually high school students returning home to Aš, which was the town on the border – high school kids – and then the train started accelerating instead of slowing down. We could see the machine-gun towers, the minefields with the barbed wire around, all the beautiful sights of a police state. And me standing there alone, watching the beautiful hills, actually, other than that on the border.
It was so close then, from that point to the border, there wasn’t much time to think of anything else. This enormously fat policeman approached me and tried to push me away from the brake, whereupon I jammed the gun in his stomach and tried to use him as a barrier between myself and his colleagues who were behind him, praying to God that I wouldn’t forced to pull the trigger. But the guy turned cowardly like all the defenders of totality and didn’t do anything, just stood there giving me a horrible look of hate. I could smell his breath smelling of beer and onion and buřty [sausages] and that’s how I crossed the border.
Karel Ruml also described his experience in the Czech language book Z deníku vlaku svobody (From the Diary of the Freedom Train
The Czechoslovak government officially protested to the American Embassy for alleged American complicity in the incident and sent two protest notes on September 20, 1951 to US Ambassador Ellis O. Briggs, who then requested assistance from Washington for a reply. The same day, the State Department sent back a “top-secret, priority, needs immediate action” telegram asking for the Ambassador Brigg’s views of a draft propaganda leaflet message intended for Czechoslovakia (original text, including misspellings of Names):
Balloons wld carry unsigned msg providing factual account train episode and reception and handling of passengers aboard. Leaflet wld also contain fol message ‘31 of the passengers choose to remain in the West. 77 chose to return to their homes, wives and husband and children and have been freely permitted to go back. These 77 chose to defer personal freedom until the day when their country and their people together regain freedom for all. It will take time, just as Engineer Konbalinka’s plans did, to switch the track that will shunt Czecho off its present road to Moscow and on to the main line that leads to freedom and justice for all.'
Reverse of leaflet bearing pictures of trains, engineer and fireman wld have fol msg from Konbalinka stating: ‘People of Czecho, I beg you, for your own good, not to believe that ‘Amer agents’ were involved in freedom train episode. It is just one more of the many lies spread by the Muscovites. Mr.Trusa and I planned the project entirely alone because conditions as so many of you know them at home have become unbearable for us.'
Ambassador Briggs responded that the balloons and leaflets should be immediately launched.
The FEP printed up the leaflets, including a photograph of 18 of the 31 Czechs who received asylum. The lofting of these leaflets began on September 26, 1951, and continued until the completed launching of 10,000 balloons with 8,000,000 messages. The State Department in Washington notified the American Embassy of the balloon launchings.
The photograph that accompanied many American newspapers articles carried the text:
The photograph that accompanied many American newspapers articles carried the text:
MESSAGE IN THE SKY—Karel Truxa and Jaroslav Konvalinka, leaders the "freedom train" escape from Czechoslovakia, get ready to inform their countrymen still behind the Iron Curtain that "unbearable" conditions spurred their flight to the West and to freedom. The balloons that they hope will carry their message, printed two and one-half million copies, are being launched from a secret point five miles from the Czech frontier.
Radio Free Europe recorded the balloon launching. As Konvalinka launched his first balloon at approximately 2 a.m., he said, “I am happy to know that these messages will reach my friends.” Truxa said, “We would prefer to send you freedom instead of freedom balloons. That the time will come when that is possible.”
With assistance of the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees (AFCR), the families settled in New Jersey, where the two men were given jobs at the Lionel Electric Train (model) factory. Their story along with a photograph appeared in some newspapers in the United States. Konvalinka was given the sobriquet “Freedom’s Casey Jones and Czech Casey Jones.”
One American newspaper advertisement that day carried an advertisement in support of the Crusade for Freedom: “Americans! A Call to Aid Our Country! Help Our Country Win the Cold War and Defeat Communistic Russia and Her Satellites’ Attack Upon Freedom and Thus Avoid the Unleashing of a ‘Hot War” Upon Our Nation and the Freedom Loving World.
Newspapers in the United States reported the text of Konvalinka’s balloon message to Czechoslovakia, with slight variations:
Dear people at home, please don't believe anybody who tried to link our escape with American agents. It is only a lie of many lies spread by the communists. Truxa and I alone made the plan and carried it out because the conditions at 'home were unbearable. The communists' have undertaken the most insane attempt to hide the truth and are making up fantastic stories involving terrorists and foreign agents.
The leaflets also contained this message from the Free Europe Press:
We are coming to you from the free sky again to tell you the truth about the escape of the Czech train…Mr. Konvalinka, Mr. Truxa, and Dr. Svec had planned the escape for months. It was a careful plan, and it involved risks. They moved cautiously, waiting for the right moment.
The feeling of all those who escaped is summed up in what one young mechanic said in a message over Radio Free Europe: ‘In Czechoslovakia we felt we were always being shadowed. This and the lack of freedom were the reasons for our flight.’ His wife added: ‘I don’t want my children to grow up slaves. We are ready to go anywhere people can live their own lives.’
(signed) ‘Winds of Freedom
There was extensive media coverage in the United States on the escape. For example, Time magazine published details of the train escape in the September 24, 1951 issue entitled “Comrade Beb Takes a Trip”:
As the Asch Express pulled out of Prague's Woodrow Wilson Station at 9:55 one morning last week, Conductor August Beb. his paunch taut but official in his brass-buttoned uniform, walked slowly through the train to see that all was in order. His train was not a big one: a baggage car and three coaches with 100-odd passengers. And there were two baskets of fruit he was supposed to deliver at the Asch station. For a veteran Communist who had spent years studying Marxism, the run was not much to look forward to...
Karel Truxa, a husky railroader, got on. Two years ago he had been stationmaster at Asch, a mile from the German border. The Communists had found two men hiding in his house "without documents," and Truxa spent five months in a concentration camp. Now he had only a small job at the station in Eger (Cheb).As he sat down in his third-class compartment on the Asch Express. Truxa carefully patted his pocket to make sure his pistol was still there.
There were other passengers that Conductor Beb might have been interested in. At Eger, Truxa's wife got on. He pretended not to know her. At other stops along the line, more people boarded the train, including the wife and children of Engineer Jaroslav Konvalinka, up ahead in the cab. Some of the new passengers seemed nervous. Two or three sat down in Truxa's compartment, others near by. A few, as if by accident, sat down near the hand brake
The train lurched through the Asch station and raced on through the crowded freight yards. Comrade Conductor Beb rushed for the emergency brake and pulled it. Nothing happened: Engineer Konvalinka had done his job well. Beb ran to one of the hand brakes, but the tight-lipped men who had been watching the brakes elbowed him away.
At the tiny town of Wildenau, half a mile inside Germany, the train panted to a stop. Conductor Beb jumped out and ran toward the locomotive, screaming insults. Said Konvalinka evenly: "You've got nothing more to tell me."
The September 24, 1951, edition of Life magazine carried a photo essay, including a photograph of unhappy train conductor August Beb, entitled, ‘A Red Train Jumps Off Party Line.”
State Department Answers Protest Note
On October 1, 1951, the American Embassy in Prague, sent the official reply to the Czechoslovakian Foreign Ministry, which, in part, read:
The ministry's note employs this fiction apparently with the purpose to conceal, if possible, the fact that the direction and departure of the train from Czechoslovakia was an unaided undertaking of certain citizens of that country who adopted this somewhat unconventional method of leaving the country and simultaneously indicated their attitude.
According to such information as has come to the knowledge of the United States Government, recent departures from Czechoslovakia have been effected among other means by such vehicles as bicycles, automobiles and trucks, as well as a considerable assortment of air-planes and even a glider whereof the train is merely the latest and largest conveyance to be employed.
Windborne Message
On October 8, 1951, Time magazine reported on the balloon launchings and Radio Free Europe under the rubric “Windborne Message” and gave details of the train episode, but the message in the leaflet as reported by Time and the spellings of the train’s engineer differed from the text in the telegram from the State Department to the US Ambassador in Prague:
Over hilly Sudetenland and the spires of Prague, thousands of white paper leaflets fluttered down. Each night for four nights 2,000 plastic balloons spilled out 2,000,000 leaflets. That was the way the people of Red Czechoslovakia got the real story last week of how Locomotive Engineer Jaroslav Konvalinka raced his Prague-Asch "freedom train" across the Czech border into Germany (TIME, Sept. 24).
Konvalinka himself helped the West's new private and enterprising propaganda agency, Winds of Freedom, * launch its balloons at the German town of Selb, where the train, with 108 people aboard, had ended its escapade. The leaflets carried pictures of Konvalinka, the train, and a group of 18 of the 31 Czechs who did not go back to Czechoslovakia.
They also carried a message from Konvalinka scotching the Reds' late, lame explanation that the train had been "kidnapped by U.S agents." Wrote Konvalinka: "My countrymen, I beg you not to believe Americans were involved. It is just one more of the many lies ... No, there were no terrorists, no secret foreign plot. The only terrorists are the Communists; the only foreigners are those from Russia.
Harold Stassen, the 1951 Crusade for Freedom campaign chairman, told the press, “The Communists have concocted a wholly false version of the escape and are pumping it out over their controlled press and radio.” Chairman Stassen also sent out telegraph messages to the Crusade state chairman that were in turn given to local newspapers:
One of the passengers aboard the runaway Czechoslovak train had with him several letters for Radio Free Europe, which had been given to him by Prague listeners. He said it was primarily through Radio Free Europe Broadcasts that he finally decided to escape the country. As a special service, Radio Free Europe has been broadcasting personal messages from all passengers to their relatives and friends in Czechoslovakia.
One American newspaper carried the headline, “Freedom Balloons Carry True Story of Train Escape. This is another Crusade for Freedom Method of Broadcast.”
One American military newspaper reportred:
The entire group of passengers spent a night and a day as guests of Grafenwohr Sub-Post where they were afforded a glimpse of living conditions outside the Iron Curtain. They were given three excellent meals, furnished sleeping quarters, toilet articles, and plenty of hot water. They also had the use of Special Services athletic and entertainment equipment to while away the time waiting for their return to their homeland.
By the time the arrangements were made for the return, the group deciding to stay had in- creased to 34, including several children.
The returnees were taken to the border in Army buses after expressing their thanks for their treatment here.
Television Docudrama
(Extract of 1977 CBS Program "When Television was Young")
On Tuesday night, October 23, at 9:30 p.m., television viewers tuned into the CBS network watched a 30 minute drama in the “Suspense” series that was entitled “The Train from Czechoslovakia.” Actor Richard Kiley played the role of Jaroslav Konvalinka and John McGovern played that of Karel Truxa. The television drama began by quoting a RFE message translated into English:
This is Radio Free Europe, the Voice of Free Czechoslovakia, bringing from our station in Munich, message of hope to out fellow Czechoslovakians imprisoned in their homeland behind the Iron Curtain.
At the program’s commercial break, Royce G. Martin, President of Auto-Lite, the sponsor of the program, and General Lucius Clay, appeared on the television screen, with a copy of the 1951 Crusade for Freedom poster in the background. Martin introduced Clay, who said: “Well, it was last year’s Crusade that built the powerful Munich radio station of Radio Free Europe. That is what the Crusade for Freedom is now doing, a voice which each day penetrates deeper through the Iron Curtain.”
Rex Marshall, the narrator of the television program finished the television program with this advice: "Gentlemen, you can join the 1951 Crusade for Freedom by sending your contribution, large or small, to General Lucius D. Clay. Remember you can help fight Communism by joining the Crusade for Freedom."
Eleven of the passengers, including the Trobl family, were granted political asylum in Canada and had arrived there on October 24, 1951. On November 19, 1951, Konvalinka, Truxa, and their families, arrived at Idelwild airport in New York, where Lawrence Cohen, president of the Lionel Electric Train Corporation, met them. There was widespread newspaper coverage of their arrival in the US.
The December 3, 1951, issue of Life magazine carried a photo of Truxa, Konvalinka, his wife and their two children at the Lionel factory looking at a model railroad tabletop display. Afterwards, the two men were sent on a 14-state journey to tell their escape story in support of the Crusade for Freedom campaign for Radio Free Europe.
The February 1952 issue of The American Magazine had a front-page story entitled “We stole a Train for Freedom,” written by Konvalinka and Truxa, that was later printed in Reader’s Digest in May 1952. The name of the train conductor was now written as “Alois Bohn, a paunchy, ardent Communist.” In this article, the men listed the reasons why they decided to escape with their families, including:
· We were sick and tired of being pushed around, spied upon, and watched.
· Instead of a worker’s paradise, we found our working conditions getting worse and worse.
· We couldn’t feed and clothe our families under Communism.
· We were frightened by what the Communists were trying to do to our children.
Internal Czechoslovakia Developments, Akcia "Selb"
After the return of the 77 persons, who did not remain in the West, Czechoslovak authorities began an investigation into the escape and those who either knew about it or were actively involved. The investigation was given the code name "Operation Selb" (Akcia "Selb). In total, 171 persons were reportedly investigated.
In October 1951, Radio Free Europe learned from a "fairly reliable" source that at least three families were forced to write letters to the Czech Minister of Interior requesting "the immediate return" of their family members, who were "being held in Germany against their will." This was in keeping with the official Czech line that "Freedom Train" passengers still in Germany had been kidnapped.
16-year-old Zdenka Hyblova was one of those who returned to Czechoslovakia. A few weeks later, she, with her friends 18-years-old Milena Poláčková and 16-years-old Kamil Kvapil, made a successful escape back into West Germany. She later said that StB officers questioned her and other returnees from the train. Some of the questions included: “You were beaten in Germany, weren’t you? You had nothing to eat, didn’t you? Did the Americans used force to keep some of the passengers in Germany? How did the Americans behave themselves with girls?”
Show Trial
After the return of the 77 persons, who did not remain in the West, Czechoslovak authorities began an investigation into the escape and those who either knew about it or were actively involved. The investigation was given the code name "Operation Selb" (Akcia "Selb). In total, 171 persons were reportedly investigated.
In October 1951, Radio Free Europe learned from a "fairly reliable" source that at least three families were forced to write letters to the Czech Minister of Interior requesting "the immediate return" of their family members, who were "being held in Germany against their will." This was in keeping with the official Czech line that "Freedom Train" passengers still in Germany had been kidnapped.
16-year-old Zdenka Hyblova was one of those who returned to Czechoslovakia. A few weeks later, she, with her friends 18-years-old Milena Poláčková and 16-years-old Kamil Kvapil, made a successful escape back into West Germany. She later said that StB officers questioned her and other returnees from the train. Some of the questions included: “You were beaten in Germany, weren’t you? You had nothing to eat, didn’t you? Did the Americans used force to keep some of the passengers in Germany? How did the Americans behave themselves with girls?”
Zdenka Hyblova's story appeared in Time magazine on October 22, 1951, (Czechoslovakia: A Pact with Pavel) and newspapers in the US. She was allowed to remain in West Germany and later worked as a speaker and script writer on a freelance basis for the Czech Desk of Radio Free Europe in Munich in the mid-1950s. She married Peter Hruby of RFE's Czech Desk in 1953 and they emigrated to the U.S. in 1957. Zdenka Hyblova eventually earned a Master's in Fine Arts (MFA) in Poetry degree from Sarah Lawrence College. New Rivers Press published her short stories and her poetry was published in Blueline and The Paris Review. She also worked as a contributing editor for Spotlight Magazine, and published with Condé Nast, the Gannett newspapers, and Parade Magazine.
In October 1951, Radio Free Europe learned from a "fairly reliable" source that at least three families were forced to write letters to the Czech Minister of Interior requesting "the immediate return" of their family members, who were "being held in Germany against their will." This was in keeping with the official Czech line that "Freedom Train" passengers still in Germany had been kidnapped.
Show Trial
In January 1953, there was a three-day show trial in Karlovy Vary, after which “a group of American agents and spies” were found guilty in the escape plot and sentenced to prison. One man was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment; he was released from prison in the 1960s.
Jaroslav Konvalinka later told reporters in the U.S.,
We do not know these people nor have we ever known them and to our recollection we have never had any contact with them. They are certainly not guilty of helping us in the train escape. It was our own idea and we executed it ourselves. The first contact we had with American agents was after we had crossed the border in the free American section of Germany.
