3 Czech Friends, Cast as Heroes and as Murderers

The New York Times ^ | 06/02/08 | DAN BILEFSKY

[lpnykahuna]

To some Czechs, it was the greatest escape of the cold war.

As Czech fugitives, the three men ended up on wanted posters across East Germany. But here in central Europe, where history is often rewritten, there are many others who view the five young Czechs as reckless murderers, even though they dodged 24,000 Soviet soldiers and the East German police for 28 days through snow-covered forests to reach the freedom of West Berlin in 1953. ... The current Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, a liberal, decided in March to honor the three survivors as heroes, no doubt expecting some controversy in a nation still grappling with its Communist past. But the government was not prepared for a searing debate that encapsulated all the ambivalence associated with the country’s recent history.

[lpnykahuna]

When is violence justified? This article raises some important questions. To me, they are freedomfighters.

However, would I say the same thing if they killed a state railroad employee to gain access to a building or a train? I'm not so sure.

Does the end justify the means? If so, when? Who decides?

[VeniVidiVici]

Considering the communists were stealing, plundering, imprisoning and killing thousands, yeah I’d say they were justified.

[Maelstorm]

The passage below is telling. People do like to think that their individual cowardice is the only sane approach when usually things like diplomacy are just a slow bleed to war.
Peace and freedom are purchased with the blood of brave men.
That is the rule of history and we in our more genteel times may have become ambivalent and questioning what our very instincts tell us is right and the only course of action acceptable to any man who does not wish to be a slave.

The primary difference and what justifies the cause of the the courageous men in this case who dared fight against a great evil is that they were fighting against a great evil that only offered them servitude, hunger, and ultimately death. They should scream back to those who scream “Murderer!” “Coward Shut Up!”.

---

“Since receiving the award, he said, he has been accosted on the street by people screaming, “Murderer!”

“We fought to free this country from Communism, and people are crying for six dead men,” Mr. Paumer said. “But these people were casualties of war, and I have no mercy for them. We, the real democrats, are crying for those who were terrorized by the Communists for 40 years.”

Historians and sociologists said the decision to honor the men also tapped into deep-seated national misgivings about Czech passivity during decades of Communism.

“People here cannot forgive Paumer and the Masin brothers, because they showed that you could fight against Communism and survive and win,” said Petr Placak, a liberal commentator. “Most Czechs believe you had to suffer quietly and wait for better times, so it is far easier to call them killers than to accept responsibility for our own impotence.” “

[thundrey]

The police killed in gun battles with them could be described as ‘casulaties of war’ The police officer whose throat they cut whilst he was subdued with chloroform and the security guard of a factory payroll the shot dead were not.
They were criminals and murderers and frankly, they deserve to be hanged, not lauded....

[rahbert]

At the time the Czech Party was very Stalinist and
the purge of the first generation Czech Communists
party apparat was taking place. Secret police were
knocking on doors in the night and confessions were
wrung from unfortunates by torture (real torture, not
“waterboarding” or panties around the head. They used
glass tubes up the urethra, then clubs).

When the force of the state is exhibited in such a
nakedly agressive way, that is all that is left to
those who would resist. The MLK/Ghandi civilly disobediant
way would have been a waste of blood. That is ultimately why
we have the second amendment; in case the state ceases to
be responsive to the people..

[demshateGod]

“in case the state ceases to
be responsive to the people..”

Hmm. Not responsive to the people eh?

[vikingd00d]

>>They were criminals and murderers and frankly, they deserve to be hanged, not lauded.

The Czech Commies slaughtered 65,000 people between 1944 and 1968. So I guess you would argue that 6 dead is a crime and 65,000 dead is merely a statistic. How very leftist of you.

[Tailgunner Joe]

I thank these brave heroes for their service to the United States of America.

[thundrey]

No, in an ideal world they too would have been hanged for crimes against humanity, but fighting in the cause of anti-communism doesn’t give one the right to murder people like that security guard whose only crime apparently was being insufficiently fanatically anti-communist to deserve life. Terrorists view people who do not share their aims and methods as expendable, and these kinds of people richly deserve the gallows as their reward.
I’m as anti-communist as they come, but then again I’m also anti-abortion. It doesn’t mean I have to support or sympathise with murdering scum who bomb abortion clinics and target the families of people who work there, or any other people who are prepared to murder in cold blood and blithely refer to their victims as ‘casualties of war’. They made it perfectly clear that they had ‘no mercy’ for anyone who was an obstacle to their goal....

[vikingd00d]

>>fighting in the cause of anti-communism doesn’t give one the right to murder people like that security guard whose only crime apparently was being insufficiently fanatically anti-communist to deserve life.

There has never been and will never be a war where only the guilty suffer. You are trying to hold those men to an impossible standard.

[thundrey]

These people made a choice to murder a police man in cold blood while he was helpless, and that security guard, who was NOTHING to do with the state apparatus that they detested so much.
All right, they hated communism, it didn’t give them the right to murder anyone who stood in their way. That is the mindset of a terrorist, and that is what these people were. It would probably been a bit too much to expect these people to hang for their crimes, but to see them lauded as heroes is nothing short of outrageous.....