Prague Winter

by Madeleine Albright

  From the fall of 1941 until January of the following year, Heydrich presided at a series of meetings intended to settle what he referred to as the Endlösung, or “final solution,” of the Jewish question in Europe. Emigration had provided a start but was clearly insufficient given Germany’s recent conquests. Labor camps and prisons could accommodate but a fraction of the three and a quarter million Jews who had come under Nazi jurisdiction. A comprehensive strategy was needed that would take into account war requirements, the führer’s urgent wish to expel Jews, and the Foreign Ministry’s desire to avoid unnecessary damage to the country’s reputation. Heydrich decided on a step-by-step approach: evacuees would be sent first from the Reich and protectorate to ghettos; then, for purposes of labor and “special handling,” to points east.

  The systematic deportation of Jews from the Czech lands began in October, when the first of five transports to Poland left Prague. The passengers included many of the city’s leading professionals and businesspeople. Upon their arrival in the Łódź ghetto, they were assigned to work details. After months of exploitation, survivors were sent thirty miles to the village of Chelmno, where the first Nazi death factory was operating. The installation of mobile and later fixed gas chambers was referred to by the Nazis as Operation Reinhard in honor of Heydrich’s leading hand.

  IN NOVEMBER, THE Germans also began the relocation of Jews to Theresienstadt or, as the Czechs called it, Terezín. This was the star-shaped army fortress that Emperor Joseph II had named for his mother 150 years earlier. The town was located near the Czech-German border, forty miles north of the capital. Prague’s Jewish leaders had been shocked by the earlier transports. The sight of their neighbors lined up and packed into trains under the eyes of the Gestapo had caused them to accept with relief the idea of a Jewish ghetto inside the protectorate; this was before anyone outside the Nazis had imagined death camps or gas chambers. If German occupation meant that Jews would be forced to live separately but nearby, so be it; matters could be worse. Heydrich and Eichmann promised not only that Czech Jews would be “self-governing” but that they would be allowed to remain at Terezín and not required to move again. That was a lie. Heydrich had already informed Eichmann and other associates that Terezín would be but a “temporary assembly camp.” In time, if all went according to plan, the Jews would be gone and the area repopulated by Germans.

  I TOURED TEREZíN while secretary of state and again in the spring of 2011. The facility is in two parts. The Small Fortress, in its history both guardhouse and penitentiary, is as one might expect: cold, grim, and hard as the concrete in its floors and the iron in its bars. Visitors are told of its history, first as home to a core of gunners under Joseph II, then in the Great War as a jail for more than 2,500 political prisoners, most notably Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Ferdinand. During the years of independence, a corps of Czechoslovak artillerists was stationed there, after which came the Germans, who, beginning in June 1940, used it as a place to detain, torture, and often execute alleged enemies of the Reich. These included leaders of the patriotic Sokol gymnastics organization, participants in student protests, perpetrators of sabotage, and others who had sheltered fugitives or in any way displeased the Nazis. There is such a terrible cruelty about the fortress that one can stand in a cell and readily imagine the cramped space stacked with so many captives that they could not lie down.

  By contrast, the so-called ghetto of Terezín looks nothing like what one might imagine of a concentration camp. There are no thick walls surrounding it, no dark dungeons, no rusted shackles. Terezín today is a town again, though sparsely populated. The buildings where the inmates were once crowded together are handsome enough; the grass is thick and green, the sense of pain and despair less easy to conjure up. This is perhaps appropriate for a place that masqueraded as a spa. Fittingly, the displays put together by the Terezín Memorial project emphasize different aspects of what the experience had been like: the rail depot, the boys’ dorm, the barracks, the administrative headquarters, the crematory. The exhibits are there, too, of the old suitcases and clothing, the arrival and departure cards, the artwork and music, the newspapers, and most hauntingly, photographs of the children.

  Terezín

  CTK PHOTO

  THE FIRST CZECH Jews to come to Terezín did so in November 1941; they were skilled laborers whose job was to prepare the old fortress town for its new function. By year’s end, trains were arriving on a more or less weekly basis. Although the ghetto was originally intended for protectorate Jews only, the Nazis found it convenient to send German, Austrian, and later Dutch and Danish Jews. Because Terezín was described publicly as a self-administered retirement community, Eichmann felt confident that “Theresienstadt will allow us to preserve our appearance abroad.”

  It didn’t take long for the Nazis to break their promise that the facility would serve as a permanent residence. Records indicate that my grandfather’s younger sister, Irma (Körbel) Paterová, was the first in my family to be sent there, arriving on December 10 along with her husband, Oscar, and their twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Herta. Five weeks later, the three were among those transported by unheated cattle car to the German-controlled Latvian city of Riga—the site of hideous pogroms the previous year. There the passengers were unloaded and taken to nearby Pikwicka Forest, where they were shot.

  IN THE SUMMER of 1941, the Czech underground had intensified its pressure on the Nazi occupiers. In September, the Germans struck back. Now it was Beneš’s turn. Heydrich’s campaign of terror demanded a dramatic response, something memorable to convince the Allies that Czechoslovaks were not to be pushed around. Behind closed doors, the president suggested “a spectacular action against the Nazis—an assassination carried out in complete secrecy by our trained paratroop commandos.”

  For months, an elite unit of Czech and Slovak officers had been undertaking missions in their homeland. Supervised by the British, parachutists were taught to operate radios, shoot, fight, read maps, live off the land, resist interrogation, handle explosives, and jump out of airplanes without injury. They carried materials useful to the Resistance such as ammunition, batteries, cash, forged papers, and information about codes. To reduce the likelihood of arrest, they wore Czech-made clothing and were supplied with locally manufactured toiletries, cigarettes, even matches. Before departure, they wrote their wills and were given tablets—sealed in paper—of cyanide. The missions of the men, who were organized into groups of two or three, sometimes involved sabotage but more typically the repair and replacement of radio transmitters. Operation Anthropoid would be more ambitious.

  Jozef Gabčík

  CTK PHOTO

  It was that rarity in time of war or peace—a secret well kept. Only a tight circle of British and Czech officials were in on the planning, my father not among them. Political sensitivities were considerable, the likelihood of success low, and the prospect that the parachutists might survive almost nil. Even on routine operations, those sent were often apprehended within days or weeks. For this mission of unprecedented daring, everything would depend on the quality of the men.

  The British recommended a combination of firearms and bombs. Jozef Gabčík would use a Czech-made Sten machine gun, lightweight and, when broken down, easily concealed. Jan Kubiš was given a supply of grenades, designed originally for crippling tanks in North Africa. In mid-December, the two were transported to London and installed in a safe house, awaiting suitable weather and th
e availability of a plane. While in the capital, the officers met Beneš, who thanked them for their bravery and stressed the importance of what they had been asked to do. The president’s personal aide, Eduard Táborský, remembers how young they appeared. “One of them seemed to me more a boy than a soldier, let alone a parachutist, ready for anything and setting off right in the midst of that hell.” A fellow trainee recalled that “they were both ordinary chaps. . . . Kubiš was a quiet fellow; he would never have hurt a fly. Gabčík, on the other hand, was fiery and enthusiastic. . . . As soldiers, they felt that orders were orders—no argument. The news from our country, telling us about the tortures and the killing of our people, had worked them up to a high pitch.”

  Jan Kubiš

  CTK PHOTO

  To fly from London to the Czech countryside and back on a single night without being detected required the many hours of darkness available only in winter. To identify a landing spot accurately demanded an amount of moonlight available only ten days a month—and a relative absence of clouds. Not until December 28 did those conditions coincide. The plane’s course took it over France, then Germany; for twenty tense minutes it was trailed by enemy fighters that either lost sight of it or ran low on fuel. In the early-morning hours, the aircraft decelerated and dipped to a point several hundred feet above the snow-covered countryside south of the city of Plzeň. At 2:24 a.m., the hatch was flung open, and moments later camouflaged parachutes descended from the sky.

  Part III

  May 1942–April 1945

  What good to mankind is the beauty of science?

  What good is the beauty of pretty girls?

  What good is a world when there are no rights?

  What good is the sun when there is no day?

  What good is God? Is he only to punish?

  Or to make life better for mankind?

  Or are we beasts, vainly to suffer

  And rot beneath the yoke of our feelings?

  What good is life when the living suffer?

  Why is my world surrounded by walls?

  Know son, this is here for a reason:

  To make you fight and conquer all!

  —HANUŠ HACHENBURG (1929–1943)

  Terezín

  16

  Day of the Assassins

  Marie Moravcová (Moravec) was in her forties, tall and amply built. She had brown hair, round cheeks, lively eyes, and a carefree laugh that when the Nazis invaded all but disappeared. She lived in a two-bedroom flat in the Žižkov neighborhood, a working-class area on the outskirts of Prague, named for the Hussite warrior Jan Žižka and known for its many pubs. Marie shared the small apartment with her husband, Alois, a pensioned railway worker, and their son, Ata, age twenty-one. She was a good-hearted woman who volunteered with the antituberculosis league and served as secretary of the Sisters of the Red Cross. The organization was influential in Prague, and its members were naturally alarmed when friends had to go underground for fear of Nazi arrest. Such families dared not register for ration coupons and so were in danger not only of jail but of starvation. The Red Cross volunteers adapted by holding unpublicized meetings and learning the tradecraft involved in smuggling food. Madam Moravcová was not normally a political person, but she had acquaintances all through the city and assured the chapter president, “If you need anything at all, I am entirely at your disposal.”

  The time was February 1942. Heydrich had been in Prague for five months. The Czech underground was still functioning, but people’s nerves were taut. Each arrest led to speculation: Who could withstand the torture and who could not? How much did the arrested person know? Which of us will be next? One day, the Sisters received an urgent message: could they arrange to shelter some young men? The first to step forward was Marie Moravcová.

  There were three of them at first, all in their late twenties, known to her as Little Ota, Big Ota, and Zdenda. Marie found places for the men to stay, then moved them around, supplying clothes, razor blades, cigarettes, and food. She introduced them to her apartment building’s caretaker, František Spinka, a coin collector by hobby who lived on the ground floor and who consented, when the visitors came back at night and whispered the correct password, to unlock the door. Spinka agreed, as well, to look after Zdenda’s large black sheepdog. The strangers, it seemed, would be keeping irregular hours.

  What were they up to? The men spent much of their time exploring the routes that separated the capital from Panenské Břežany, the town where Heydrich had secured a palatial château for his family. Trying not to attract attention, Zdenda and his comrades trudged along the roads and surveyed the surrounding bushes and clumps of trees. They paid particular heed to places where the road from Panenské Břežany curved, deciding finally on a hilly stretch where cars heading for Prague had to slow before turning sharply to the right and crossing a bridge into the city. This was in a residential neighborhood consisting of narrow streets and small houses, without a police station near. Through contacts among Czech staff at Hradčany Castle, the men learned of Heydrich’s daily routine. They knew that his car would carry him through the winding intersection each morning and evening, sometimes with a security escort, usually not.

  When asked by others in the Resistance what they were up to, the men laughed and said that they had come to “count the ducks on the Vltava.” Each had a briefcase, carefully concealed. Little Ota acquired a girlfriend, a young acquaintance of Madam Moravcová. Big Ota promised to marry the nineteen-year-old daughter of the family in whose apartment he was staying. At times, the men asked Marie, or “Auntie,” as they called her, for something a little different: a length of rope, a place to hide a transmitter, a bicycle whose serial number had been filed off.

  Little Ota’s real identity was Gabčík; Big Ota’s was Kubiš; Zdenda was Sergeant Josef Valčik, a radio operator whose team had been inserted separately on the same night as the other two. In early April, they were joined by Lieutenant Adolf Opálka, the senior officer of a group that had arrived by parachute in late March. He had been accompanied by a man called Vrbas but whose birth name, destined for infamy, was Karel Čurda.

  The parachutists were able to communicate with London via a transmitter set up in the village of Pardubice and monitored by other members of their team. Couriers traveled on foot or by bicycle and employed a full set of special knocks, passwords, and ciphers. Any message, once decoded, was rewritten with a similar meaning but in different words so that it could not be used to break the code even if intercepted. Sometimes instructions came from Beneš himself.

  One morning in late April, Madam Moravcová asked her son to accompany Zdenda on a trip to the countryside to retrieve a radio beacon hidden by another team of parachutists, recently arrived, who had run into trouble upon landing. Before they could complete their mission, the two were discovered by a Czech policeman, who warned them to vacate the area because it was heavily patrolled by Germans. Ata, upset by the close call, was further shaken by a warning from Zdenda: “You see that wooden crate, Ata? The Huns might knock it about so hard it would begin to talk; but if that happens to you, you mustn’t say anything, not a word, you understand?”

  Although the purpose of Operation Anthropoid was supposed to be a mystery, various figures in the underground came to suspect what was being planned; furious arguments broke out between the parachutists—who had been given an order—and local leaders who feared that the mission, whether or not it succeeded, would doom their own future efforts. The Resistance sent a message to London urging that the operation be canceled or at least transferred to a less provocative target. On May 15, speaking over the BBC, Beneš appeared to deliver his answer:

  In this situation, a proof of strength even in our own country—rebellion, open action, acts of sabotage and demonstrations, may become desirable or neces
sary. On the international plane, action of this kind would contribute to the preservation of the nation itself, even if it had to be paid for by a great many sacrifices.

  The instruction seemed clear: the countdown was on. In London, the word went out: now that Beneš has pronounced himself—don’t stir things up. On May 21, my father received an unsigned memo on a blank sheet of paper: “BBC broadcasts call too much attention to sabotage. . . . Sabotage still goes on but less said about it the better.” In Prague, the team had to act quickly; word from the castle was that the target would leave soon for a new assignment in France.

  ON THE EVENING of May 26, 1942, Heydrich inaugurated the Prague Music Festival, featuring a concert of chamber works composed by his father; the proud son wrote the program notes. It was a memorable moment.

  The following morning, a Wednesday, the acting protektor was driven from his estate toward his office in Prague. Despite warnings from Berlin, he traveled without a police escort, believing that no Czech would be so foolhardy as to attack him. His open-top Mercedes tourer nonetheless maintained a high speed until forced to slow as it approached the hairpin curve. Opálka and Valčik, acting as lookouts, signaled the arrival. When the car entered the turn, a figure arose from the side of the road, shook off his raincoat, and pointed a machine gun at the vehicle. Nothing happened: Gabčík’s weapon had jammed. Instead of ordering his driver to accelerate, Heydrich drew his pistol, stood in his seat, and motioned for the vehicle to brake. At that instant, Kubiš stepped from the shadows on the far side of the pavement and tossed one of his powerful antitank grenades toward the right rear tire. A loud explosion broke the morning quiet. The bomb had fallen a few inches short, but the force of its detonation propelled shards of metal, glass, and seat stuffing from the Mercedes into the passenger’s guts.