The Jara Kohout Story: When the Rooster Escaped through the Iron Curtain ©

Visitors to the famed Vysehrad cemetery in Prague might see a gravestone with a tragic comic face and the engraved words:

JARA KOHOUT

*9.XII.1904  +23.X.1994

HEREC

HEREC is the Czech word for actor. Who was Jara Kohout? The life of Jara Kohout and the role he played in the Cold War, including working for Radio Free Europe, will be examined briefly below.

Early Life

Jara (Jaroslav) Kohout was born on December 19, 1904 in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family was well to do and as a child, Kohout studied violin and dancing. He made his first stage appearance, when he was eight years old. Jara Kohout had red hair and his name, coincidently, translates into English as “rooster”, which became his nickname throughout his long entertainment career.

When Kohout was seventeen, he co-founded a student cabaret group called “Sketch,” and his stage career was set in stone. He eventually had his own movie theater, a wine bar and a film studio. He appeared in his first film, a silent movie, in 1922. By the time WW II broke out, he had appeared in over 60 films in Czechoslovakia and was very popular for his comic portrayals of ordinary people.

During the German occupation of Prague in World War II, Kohout was arrested and interrogated in Pancik prison. Reportedly, a German SS officer, who had admired his films, arranged for him to be released. Kohout then worked on the local radio station in Prague performing non-offensive, nonpolitical sketches. After the war ended, Kohout drove around Czechoslovakia performing in local theaters.

In 1948, the Communist controlled Ministry of Information tried to get him to support the regime; he refused. Kohout was accused of “obstructing the Communist program of re-educating Czech youth,” and his theater was closed down. One of Kohout’s daughters had a boyfriend named Willi Schick, who was to play a major role in Kohout’s life.  But first, who was Willi Schick?

William (Willi) Schick

William (Willi) Schick was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in Prague.  At the outbreak of World War II, his father Leopold Schick, who was Hungarian, attempted to get immigration papers from the Hungarian Embassy in Prague for the family.  Reportedly, when police confronted him he ran, was shot in the back and died.

Schick, his brother and mother were sent to the Teresin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in 1941, his mother followed in 1942.  His brother joined them in 1943.  In December 1943, he and his brother were then sent to the concentration Camp B2B, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Poland, where his mother was later sent. They had a one-day reunion before being again separated. Only after the end of World War II did he learn that she died later during the typhus epidemic in Auschwitz.

Schick twice escaped the gas chamber: the first time was when he was scheduled to march to the death chamber, but the gas system did not work. The second time was when he was in a group of prisoners that was displaced in line by the arrival of 10,000 Hungarian Jews, who died within 72 hours. Schick and his brother afterwards stood before Joseph Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor nicknamed the “Angel of Death.” Mengele decided Schick and his brother were still healthy enough to work and were not gassed.  

In 1944, he and about 500 other Czechoslovak Jews were sent to a slave labor camp near Dresden, Germany.  In April 1945, he and his brother and the others went on a ”death march“ to Mauthausen concentration camp 900 miles away in Austria.  The war ended before they reached the infamous camp.

After World War Two, Willi Schick and his brother returned to Prague, where they were given an apartment by the new democratic government, which survived only until 1948, when the Communists took over. Schick, who was fluent in English and other languages, found a job with Czechoslovak airlines but because he refused to join the Communist party in 1948, he lost both his job and apartment. 

Schick and Kohout decided to escape Czechoslovakia to the West. It was a time of the completion of Soviet domination of East Europe, the Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan, and the Iron Curtain. Eastern, Central, and Western Europe were physically divided by barbed wire, armed patrols, land mines and guard towers. Leaving Czechoslovakia was practically impossible.

In a Prague cafe, Schick met a man from the Czech “underground,” who told him he could arrange for their escape to the American Zone in West Germany for $400 per person. Kohout paid for their escape.

Escape Through the Iron Curtain

As the story goes, a friend and theatrical agent had arranged for a 3rd October 1948 guest appearance by Kohout for customs officials in the town As, where then West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslovakia came together. In October 1948, they all took a train to the town. Schick was listed on the program as the piano player in the cabaret show.

Kohout performed in the play “That’s Our Backyard,” before three hundred Czech customs officers and their wives. Kohout was dressed in a rooster’s costume for his role. At the intermission, Kohout run away from the makeshift theater, still dressed in costume as a rooster, into the forest to the border, where he met an underground member. He remained dressed in costume, in case that if he were caught, he would pretend to be “crazy.  He made his way through the border with the help of the underground guide and finally succeeded in joining his family, who had been brought to the border by another guide. But as they were escaping through the Iron Curtain, they looked back and saw that the underground guides had confiscated their luggage and were heading off in a tractor.

Schick had become separated from the Kohouts, but after crossing into Germany by himself, he rejoined them a few days later.

In Germany Kohout and his family were sent to the refugee camp in Ludwigsburg. To support them, Kohout traveled to other "displaced persons” camps entertaining Czech refugees to earn a little money. Schick played the straight man to Kohout’s comedy.

Radio Diffusion Francaise in Paris, which "as then broadcasting to Czechoslovakia, offered Jara Kohout a job and the family moved to Paris. He continued his stage career and performed in cabaret clubs, while broadcasting satirical and anti-Communist programs. In 1951, Pavel Tigrid sent him an invitation to join Radio Free Europe’s “Voice of Free Czechoslovakia,” which he accepted. The family then moved to Munich, Germany.

Willi Schick went to Munich in 1948 and worked three years as a translator for the U.S. Army, before emigrating to the United States in March 1951.

Radio Free Europe and Camp Valka

Two of Kohout’s Radio Free Europe programs in Munich were programs “Cafe de l’Europe” and “Camp Valka.” In October 1951, the largest refugee camp in Bavaria was Camp Valka in Nuremberg-Langwasser, with over a thousand persons from 28 countries.  Latvian and Estonian “displaced persons,” who had lived at the camp until 1949 named it Valka after a town that divided into two parts on the Latvian-Estonian border -- a symbol of friendship. 

The March 10, 1952, issue of Life magazine contained a photo-essay about Kohout, his daughter Alena and other actors entertaining at Camp Valka: “Life Goes to a Radio Party for Refugees: Czechs put on show to heckle the Reds.”  One of his jokes was: “Why is the Red Army called 'Red?'  Because it is blushing in shame for its founder Trotsky was a capitalist.”

His show was recorded every second Monday and broadcast to Czechoslovakia over Radio Free Europe. The microphone and pennant with the initials RFE were visible in three of the Life magazine photographs. The article went on:

Kohout’s daughter Alena joined him for the Camp Valka performances and one photo in Life shows them demonstrating, “How Communists dance is burlesques ... to a boogie-woogie number, Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” A poster on the wall at Camp Valka contained the message: “As you at home have been grateful for all news, so today people in Czechoslovakia wait for words of hope.”

Kohout’s daughter Alena joined him for the Camp Valka performances and one photo in Life shows them demonstrating, “How Communists dance is burlesques ... to a boogie-woogie number, Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” A poster on the wall at Camp Valka contained the message: “As you at home have been grateful for all news, so today people in Czechoslovakia wait for words of hope.”

Exile Life in the USA

In 1952, Kohout and his family emigrated to the Untied States and Kohout joined Radio Free Europe in New York.  

The November 1952 issue of entertainment magazine Billboard contained this reference to his arrival:  “Jara Kohout, Czech comic and Iron Curtain refugee, is in the U.S. to make radio and TV appearances on behalf of Radio Free Europe.” 

The March 1953 issue of Changing Times magazine had this to say about Kohout and Radio Free Europe:

How to get the messages through? Well, here’s one way. You get hold of Jara Kohout, who before he escaped from the communist cops, used to be a sort of Bob Hope in his native Prague. You stand Jara in front of a radio microphone in Munich, in free Germany, and you say to him, ‘its all yours. Go ahead and perform.’ So Jara performs. He tells jokes, sings songs, and rips the arrogant communist leaders with satire. 

A few hundred miles to the east, his listeners huddle around dozen of softly playing radio sets, and they listen. When he is through, they smile, and they know that beyond the Curtain there are people who believe with them that the day of freedom will come. 

His Radio Free Europe radio program in New York was “Fun Time,” broadcast four times a week. Also, on Sunday afternoons, “Kohout’s Cabaret” was “a must” in Czechoslovakia for those who risked their jobs and freedom by listening to RFE. The radio programs were taped in RFE studios in New York and flown to Munich for transmission over the Iron Curtain.  Here are examples of his humor that appealed to his listeners behind the Iron Curtain:

Have you heard about the shortage of doctors in Czechoslovakia. It’s awful. They’re so short of doctors that a thousand workmen were lined up along the tracks at a certain railway station the other day and commanded by the local radio, “Everybody strip to the waist and put your tongue.” All was ready, an express train zipped by. Looking out at the men from one of the train windows was the Czech minister of health. After the train had passed, the local radio announced, “You have just passed the health checkup. Everybody has been found fit for hard labor.”

Dentists have a hard time in Czechoslovakia now because everyone keeps his mouth shut.

The love of the Czech people hold for the Soviet Union is illustrated by the following story. It seems that there was an old tree growing in the middle of a busy road, was an obstacle to traffic—but nobody had the heart to chop it down. Then one night somebody fastened a sign on it reading, “This tree is the Property of the Soviet Union.”  In the morning there was not a chip of the tree left in sight.

The secret police frequently go into the churches behind the Iron Curtain with microphones to find out whom the people are praying for.

I don’t know that Boy Scout trick of finding directions with a watch, but if I slowly swing around with my watch extended like this, some Communist is bound to sneak up and make off with it.  That will be the East, we’ll go the opposite way.

The Communist press in Czechoslovakia warned readers not to tune in “this capitalist clown.”

Attention Comrades

In 1954, Viking Press published a satirical book with the extraordinary long title: Attention Comrades! The Party will hold an educational meeting tonight. Attendance is purely voluntary.  The Party will record the names of those absent for future reference. American journalist Morton Sontheimer wrote the text, and the book contained photographs of Jara Kohout making “funny faces” to go along with the text. The November 1954 issue of Free Europe Press’ journal News from Behind the Iron Curtain contained this reference to the book: “A picture story with photographs of Jara Kohout, the famous Czechoslovak comedian, who has been working with Radio Free Europe in Munich since his escape from his native land. Mr. Kohout provides facial reactions to “typical lines from Communist propaganda in the satellites states.”

Jara Kohout wrote this message in the book: “There are many scarcities behind the Iron Curtain, but two of the most important are truth and humor. ... Free Europe through Crusade for Freedom. They hope — and I hope — that you will keep it strong.“  One newspaper account of the book wrote that Kohout brought with him when he escaped

1.    A desire to keep entertaining his Czech fans, which he does via Radio Free Europe,

2.    A contempt for Red political meetings, some of whose favorite slogans he satirizes – the way other Czechs would if they dared.

During one on his visits to Cleveland, Ohio, he received the ceremonial Golden Key to the City.  Jara Kohout was also a member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Acting Career in USA

Stage

In New York, May 8, 1960, Kohout was one of the performers of “The Actor’s Co-op,” with Barbra Streisand in the off-Broadway adaptation of  Czech Capek brother’s play The Insect Comedy (The World We Live in). Barbara Streisand, then 18 years old played the part of a butterfly, a messenger and a “Second Moth” in her acting debut. The play was not successful and closed after only 3 performances. Radio Free Europe reportedly broadcast a radio version of the play a few weeks later.

In 1967, Kohout performed in the Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass’ off-Broadway play The Wicked Cooks (Die boesen Koeche) in which he played the senior cook.  Czechoslovakian-born Vasek Simek directed the play. The play was performed only 16 times between January 23, 1967, and February 5, 1967 at the Orpheum Theater.

Kohout was in another unsuccessful off-Broadway play “A Phantasmoria Historie of D. Johan Fausten Magister,” which saw only one performance at the Truck and Warehouse Theater on April 23, 1973. Vasek Simek wrote and directed this play. One of his co-actors was Danny DeVito, whom we will meet again below.

The Vancouver, Canada, Association of British Columbia was starting a local Czech theater group in 1976.  Kohout offered to go there and perform in his famous musical comedy from the 1930s, On the Green Meadow.  But the local group had to cast and rehearse the play before he would go there. That was done, and Kohout performed on November 4, 1977, before a packed house of 400 Czechs and Slovaks in the Metro Theater.  The audience “gave great ovations and multiple curtain calls not only to the histrionics of the aging Kohout, but mainly to friends and neighbors appearing on stage.”

Movies

Kohout had support roles in four Hollywood films: What’s So Bad About Feeling Good in 1968, Taking Off in 1971 and The Comeback Trail in 1982. He had a role as a “Soviet delegate” in the 1968 Hollywood comedy, What’s So Bad About Feeling Good. 

In the 1971 cult film The Projectionist, he played the Candy Man and Mad Scientist.  In this film, he actually recounts the story of how he escaped from Communist controlled Czechoslovakia.

Kohout also had a small part in the 1971 film Taking Off—the first Hollywood film directed by Czech émigré director Milos Forman, who left Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion in August 1968. Forman also wanted Kohout to be in the 1975 classic film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  But, reportedly, Radio Free Europe would not release Kohout to do it and the role was given to fellow actor Danny DeVito, who had the performed the role in the 1971 off-Broadway stage version of the Ken Kesey novel. In the 1982 comedy film, The Comeback Trail, Kohout played a German film producer.

Return to Prague

After the Velvet Revolution and collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia in November 1989, Kohout returned to Prague on April 3, 1990, after 30 years in exile.

In 1991, he was interviewed on Czech television about his life in the theater, cabaret, films, USA and he sang some songs.

His first wife died in the USA in 1979, after 53 years of marriage.  In 1992, Kohout married for a second time to a journalist. They collaborated on a book of interviews The Little Big Comedian that appeared in the Czech language posthumously in 1994.

Jara Kohout appeared on television, radio, went on lecture tours, published books, and appeared in two Czech films, before he died of prostate cancer at age 89 on October 23, 1994 in Prague.

In February 2010 Kohout’s daughter Alena received an award a silver commemorative medal from the Senate of the Czech Republic for assisting her father as an actor and for “actively participating in compatriot life (in the USA), in which she remains today.”

For more information:

In addition to the movie, The Projectionist, excerpts from many of his early films in Czechoslovakia can be view on youtube, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPiBvW4sdwA&frags=pl%2Cwn

Jara Kohout recorded many songs in his long career. Listen to Jara Kohout singing Kikiriki (Rooster) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-k7Avo3OEQ&frags=pl%2Cwn

September 1951: When the Czech Freedom Train crashed through the Iron Curtain ©

September 11, 1951, passenger train no. 3717 carrying 108 persons and crew was “hijacked” and crashed through the Iron Curtain when it was deliberately driven across the Czechoslovak-German border into the town of Wildenau, in the American military Sector. Thirty-one persons, including Jaroslav Konvalinka (1911-1999), the train’s engineer, Karel Truxa (1922-1993), and their respective families, asked for and received permission to stay in the West.

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.

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:

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?”  

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.

  

The Freedom Bell in Berlin ©

  
Below is a summary history of the Freedom Bell (sometimes called The World Freedom Bell), rang out for the first time in West Berlin before an estimated crowd of 400,000 on October 24, 1950. The Freedom Bell, based on the Liberty Bell that is housed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the logo or symbol for the Crusade for Freedom and for Radio Free Europe.

At the request of the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE), the public relations company John Price Jones wrote a plan in late 1949 that called for a symbol to be used in the proposed upcoming fundraising campaign in 1950—the Crusade for Freedom. In January 1950, DeWitt Poole of NCFE called his friend Harry Bullis, then Chairman of General Mills Corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and asked him for assistance in fulfilling the fund-raising plan. Bullis agreed and contacted Abbott Washburn, World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) veteran and public relations expert at the General Mills Corporation, who consented to cooperate with the fledgling Crusade for Freedom team.

Washburn and his colleague Nathan Crabtree also came up with the idea of the symbol for the Crusade: a Freedom Bell, based on the famous Liberty Bell, housed in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, which also happened to be the logo or seal of the NCFE in 1949. 

New York industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague designed the ten-ton bell, which had a laurel wreath symbolizing peace encircling the top and a frieze of five figures representing the five races of humankind passing the torch of freedom. Teague decided on the inscription in classic Roman letters, based on a statement by Abraham Lincoln, “That this world Under God shall have a new birth of freedom.” 

On May 1, 1950, the Crusade for Freedom’s Campaign Letter Number One was sent to the regional and state Chairmen in the United States, under General Clay’s name, with details of the bell symbol:

Compelling symbol of the Crusade will be a great new Freedom Bell … Throughout history the struggle toward human freedom has been one of the noblest achievements of man. The Freedom Bell will become a permanent memorial to all the men and women, of all periods, who gave their lives to the cause of freedom.

The first clap of the Freedom Bell will be carried to the peoples of the earth by the most extensive network of radio power ever assembled -- spearheaded by Radio Free Europe. Simultaneously, bells will ring out all over America: church bells, city hall bells, school bells.

The bell was cast on July 27, 1950, at the British foundry of Gillett and Johnston in Croydon, England. 

On September 6, 1950, it arrived in New York City and two days later it was the centerpiece of a large parade in Manhattan. During the First Crusade for Freedom’s publicity trip, the Freedom Bell was placed on a large flatbed truck and transported by truck and a “Freedom Train” to 26 major cities in the United States.

On September 16, 1950, two thousand persons in Denver, Colorado, went to see the Freedom Bell that had arrived on a flatbed truck from Kansas City, Missouri. The Freedom Bell was on display for two hours before heading off to Salt Lake City, Utah. One of the speakers during the short stop-over in Denver was future United States President Dwight Eisenhower, who in his remarks said, “Since the beginning of our republic, a bell has been a symbol of liberty and freedom. The Freedom Bell is designed to spread the truth about America. Every time the bell tolls, we hope new facts and new understandings will go out to the world.”

More than I6 million Americans eventually joined the Crusade for Freedom by signing the Freedom Scroll, which read:

•  I believe in the sacredness and dignity of the individual.
• I believe that all men derive the right to freedom equally from God.
• I pledge to resist aggression and tyranny wherever they appear on earth.
• I am proud to enlist in the Crusade for Freedom.
• I am proud to help make the freedom Bell possible, 
• To be a signer of this Declaration of Freedom,
• To have my name included as a permanent part of the Freedom Shrine in Berlin, and to join with the millions of men and women throughout the world who hold the cause of freedom sacred.

The Freedom Bell returned to New York City on October 8, 1950, and preparations were made for its departure to Schöneberg City Hall in West Berlin. The Freedom Bell was unloaded at Bremerhaven, Germany, and then delivered to the Schoenberg Town Hall in Berlin’s American-controlled Sector, where it arrived on October 21, 1950. General Clay arrived the next day. Abbott Washington, who with Nate Crabtree came up with the idea of the Freedom Bell, was in the group that accompanied Clay.

It was officially dedicated with extensive media coverage at the Schöneberg Town Hall (site of John F. Kennedy’s famous Berlin speech) before hundreds of thousands of Berliners on October 24, 1950. General Clay dedicated the Freedom Bell as it rang out for the first time shortly afternoon. His speech was broadcast around the world, including into East Europe over Radio Free Europe. Prominently situated in front of Clay as he spoke with microphones from the radio stations RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) and Radio Free Europe:

Clay pushed the button that was supposed to electronically ring the bell, but a fuse blew and it had to be started by someone physically pushing it in the belfry.

Every Sunday at 11:59am, the pealing of the bell is still heard throughout Germany via radio stations of the  Deutschlandradio Kultur network, with a German translation of the first three sentences of the Freedom Scroll. 

Listen to the Freedom Bell and the German text:

The “Freedom Scrolls” are still enshrined in the vault at the base of the belfry of the Town Hall. Visitors to the building can readily see the envelopes and packages containing the scrolls through the vault’s glass door. 

For more information:

Nate Crabtree. The Story of the World Freedom Bell, Minneapolis, The Nate Crabtree Company, 1951.

Veronika Liebau and Andreas Daum. The Freedom Bell in Berlin / Die Freiheitsglocke in Berlin. Berlin: Jaron, 2000.