Prague Winter

by Madeleine Albright

  The Czechoslovak intelligence chief, František Moravec (no relation to Marie), was among those who considered the assassination a success. The action garnered worldwide attention, elevated the country’s status among exile groups in London, and deprived the Nazis of one of their most capable leaders. The English diplomat Bruce Lockhart, a friend of Jan Masaryk and ordinarily Czechoslovakia’s most steadfast ally within the Foreign Office, held a contrary view: the incident had magnified the pressures faced by the Resistance, he asserted, while adding nothing to the Allied cause.

  The plot against Heydrich illustrated the complex choices faced by leaders and citizens alike. Beneš had to weigh, on the one side, the political benefits of landing a dramatic blow and, on the other, the inevitable repercussions—the Nazis had the ability and the will to retaliate harshly. Inside the protectorate, many Czechs faced a more personal dilemma. Active members of the Resistance had already decided to sacrifice their lives if necessary but many others were in the position of having to make instantaneous judgments: to inform or to keep quiet; to bear witness or look away. The caretaker and his wife had never signed up for the underground, but when Marie turned to them for help, each replied, “Here I am,” at grave danger to themselves. The same is true of friends and relatives who found room for the fugitives in their basements, garages, or attics “for just a few days.” It is little wonder that the priests at the Boromejsky church quarreled among themselves about the proper course to take.

  Still other Czechs were morally at risk because of their professions, including the first doctor to examine the wounded Heydrich, the interpreter present at the interrogation of Ata Moravec, the firemen ordered to direct their hoses into the church basement, and the police called to secure the site. These men weren’t being instructed to kill anybody but to make life easier for those who would. Put into that position today, how would we respond? What is accomplished by refusing to obey? Are there not other doctors, interpreters, firemen, and police who would do what they were told if we did not? Wouldn’t we be sacrificing our lives for nothing?

  Čurda was a villain, but what about the Czechs—and there were hundreds—who came forward with information concerning what they had seen on the days surrounding the assassination? Were they greedy, or were they honestly trying to save lives by removing the immediate cause of Nazi brutality? What should we think of the weak-kneed president, Hácha, who condemned the assault on Heydrich and begged his countrymen to cooperate in the investigation? What about the local officials who did all the Germans asked them to do but, like the good soldier Švejk, with as little competence and efficiency as possible?

  The above questions bring to mind a Czech variant of the excuse “I was just following orders.” It translates as “I was not the conductor of the orchestra, only a musician.” My own reaction is to feel disdain for the outright traitors and unrestrained admiration for the heroes who chose bravely. As for the many who kept their eyes averted and mouths shut, doing all they could to avoid involvement, I feel neither respect nor any sense of superiority. Placed in the same circumstances, would I have shown the courage of a Madam Moravcová? As much as I would like to think so, I can make no such claim.

  The assassination yielded a mixed result but was, in my view, both a courageous choice and the right one. Hitler’s response, though savage, undermined the Nazi cause almost as much as did Heydrich’s death. The Germans had set out to destroy all evidence that Lidice had ever existed; but within weeks of the massacre, the names of towns and neighborhoods in the United States and a dozen other countries were changed in its honor. Allied soldiers painted the name on the side of their tanks, and the secretary of the U.S. Navy, Frank Knox, declared that “if future generations ask us what we were fighting for in this war, we shall tell them the story of Lidice.”

  Hollywood responded with two movies, both released in 1943. Hitler’s Madman starred the lanky John Carradine as Heydrich. The more interesting—Hangmen Also Die!—was the work of two German refugees, Bertolt Brecht and the incomparable director Fritz Lang. Although based but loosely on the facts, the script focused on the assassin’s true-to-life moral quandary: to turn himself in or to remain at large while Czech hostages were executed. The film concludes with a song, “Never Surrender,” and a promise: it is not the end.

  Today, Lidice is still widely memorialized in movies and books, while Hitler’s plan to build a special memorial for Heydrich was never taken up. In 1945, the wooden marker on his grave disappeared; it has not been replaced.

  17

  Auguries of Genocide

  Early in 1942, Jan Masaryk told an audience in New York City, “This is the most crucial year in the history of the human race.” His listeners could but agree. The previous December, Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States had declared war on Japan, and Hitler had done the same toward the United States. The enemy had left no choice: America was in the war. Churchill rushed to Washington, where he secured a promise from Roosevelt to accord priority to the clash in Europe. Given that the United States had just been assaulted in the Pacific, this was no small commitment.

  Jan Masaryk had been in America since the end of 1941, speaking and granting interviews up and down the East Coast. Known for his irreverence in youth, he now played the part of preacher. He said that the United States must assume the role of Moses because no one else had the power and credibility to lead. He pled the cause of the small countries, especially “the lovely old land of Bohemia,” observing that Jesus, too, had come from a nation of modest size. He shared his feelings, as well, about Germany.

  Like Beneš and other Allied leaders, Masaryk paid homage to the icons of German humanism. Past glories, however, could not excuse the “periodic ethical and moral blackouts” that scarred the country’s cultural heritage. “It is not Hitler who made Germany,” Masaryk asserted, “it is Germany who produced Hitler.” “Until the war is over,” he added later, “I do not know any nice Germans. . . . We must eliminate the people who believe that . . . aggressive warfare has any place in the eyes of God.”

  In London, Beneš had been in frequent contact with the antifascist Sudeten leaders, who were also in exile. Their question: would the Beneš government be expansive enough to include them? The answer, it became clear, was no. As early as 1940, Beneš had begun pondering the need to remove Germans from Czechoslovak soil. He had originally thought that some territorial concessions might be appropriate. However, the combination of Heydrich’s terror and the destruction of Lidice had convinced most Czechs—including Beneš—that Germans had forfeited the right to bargain; they were culpable both individually and collectively for crimes of war. From that time forward, Beneš insisted that a massive deportation be part of the postwar reckoning. “Every Sudeten German who was not actively opposed to Nazism,” he insisted, “must go and go immediately.” Even though the president made an exception for people with proven anti-Hitler credentials, the ethical dilemma remained. Bruce Lockhart, the supportive British emissary, noted drily, “President Beneš has found his own solution to the problem. He has borrowed it from Hitler. It is an exchange of populations.”

  Although denying their requests, Beneš spoke respectfully to the Sudeten German leaders who had fled to London. He had reason to. Most of them despised Hitler for his crimes and for despoiling the reputation of their people. Forced to decide between collaboration and exile, they had chosen the honorable course, only to find that they could not win. A Nazi victory would spell disaster; an Allied triumph would leave their people without a home.

  THE ANNOUNCERS ON my father’s broadcast team did not use their real names when on the air for fear that reprisals would be taken against their families. That precaution extended to my father, but I doubt, in his case, that it mattered. After I became secretary of state, I was shown a copy of a document prepared during the war by the Prague command of the German secret police. The paper requested that the Czech citizenship of the “Jew Kor
bel,” his wife, Anna, and daughter, Marie Jana, be revoked on the grounds that my father had “made himself available to the illegal Czech government in London.” Even years later, I find it disturbing that the secret police had a correct listing for my family’s address in England.

  The stars of the London broadcasts, Beneš and Masaryk, were the opposite of anonymous; they wanted their names to be associated intimately with the national cause. Beneš spoke periodically, especially to mark anniversaries and other important events. The foreign minister, when he was not traveling, was on the air every Wednesday. His talks were unconventional, eschewing political rhetoric for lively anecdotes. He dismissed Mussolini as a “puffed-up gangster,” Hitler as a “Viennese paperhanger,” and the Nazis as “pagans,” who, in contrast to the ancients of Troy, waged war on behalf not of a beautiful woman but of an ugly man. Aware that his audience back home had a tendency to gloominess, Masaryk spoke in soothing terms, predicting that “those who worship force must eventually be exhausted”; his favorite word was “decency,” and his closing advice “Chin up and carry on!”

  Beneš alone directed the government, but the younger man helped him to navigate the choppy waters of British politics. Masaryk had promised his dying father that he would do all he could to assist Beneš; his loyalty was unquestioned. Still, they made an odd couple—the smallish, reserved diplomat next to the jocular, six-foot-two-inch force of nature. Beneš represented Czechoslovak interests, but his colleague was the nation’s emissary to the world.

  Through the war years, Masaryk appeared before groups all around the British Isles. My father sometimes accompanied him. Decades later, he described one such moment:

  Masaryk entered the hall, tall and slow, with a shy expression and markedly uncertain eyes. Those who had not met him must have felt from the first second that a personality had entered their midst. He greeted acquaintances and quickly became informal, jovial, sparkling with wit, and sharing his beautiful smile. In these moments, he sensed intimately the nature of his audience—its special interests, worries, and weaknesses. And then he spoke: tenderly about people who deserved or needed caressing, but most brutally about those who had violated the basic laws of humanity. From time to time, his hand rose as if he wanted to give with his fine aristocratic fingers the last touch to his thoughts. One asked: was he a tribune, a passionate speaker, an actor? He was all of these.

  Masaryk was fond of saying that he loved England “because my charwoman keeps her hat on when she’s scrubbing the floor and because the plumber who comes to mend the plug in the bathroom offers me a Player’s cigarette. He’d offer the king one. That’s democracy.” Such phrases charmed the British, but Masaryk was brash enough, when warranted, to speak bluntly. He told the British Empire League, whose members had endorsed Munich, that the Nazis may have started in Prague but would not stop until they had endangered Ottawa, Sydney, Delhi, Johannesburg, and every outpost of the empire.

  He was also frank in expressing outrage at the crimes being perpetrated against Jews. My father was with him one afternoon when Masaryk met with a group of Jewish émigré children. A girl, clothed in a traditional costume, presented him with a copy of the Torah. In reply he spoke, as he often did, about Hitler’s effort to deprive Jews of their dignity and compared Jewish aspirations for a homeland to those of his own Czech people. “My dear children,” he concluded, “by this holy book of yours, I solemnly swear not to return home myself until all of you are at home again.”

  IN OCTOBER 1942, the Korbel household was transformed by the arrival of Kathy, my baby sister. I was no longer the center of attention, but that was fine with me. The month before, I had reached a whole new level of accomplishment: enrolling as a kindergartener in the Kensington High School for Girls, about a ten-minute walk from our apartment. As required by the dress code, I wore a gray tunic and pleated skirt topped by a cherry red blazer and beret with an accessorized gas mask.

  Having nothing with which to compare, I didn’t appreciate how fortunate I was to be with my family. Thousands of other refugee children could communicate with their parents only by bouncing thoughts off the moon. Many were shuttled from foster home to foster home; a few were well provided for on large estates, while others functioned as unpaid servants in households that were economically hard pressed. In contrast, my father walked me to school each day and was home for dinner whenever he could. A few times, I visited his office, where I proceeded to disrupt serious work and shake hands with members of the government in exile. I also attended the occasional reception and was introduced to Beneš, who was kind but, even to my inexperienced eyes, stiff and formal.

  My father, too, was a formal man but gregarious nonetheless. He loved to tell stories and didn’t mind when I climbed on him even if it meant that he had to put aside his newspaper and ever-present pipe. My mother was friendly with those she knew and less inclined to be strict when I misbehaved. Now in her early thirties, she had a glorious smile and dark brown hair that she wore in a roll around her head. I was fascinated by how she managed the roll, placing a cut-off top of an old stocking on her head and tucking her hair in around it.

  One morning when my mother had to stay home with Kathy, my cousin Dáša took me by the hand and escorted me to the Ealing Studios. The well-known Czech director Jiří Weiss was making a short movie about Czechoslovak refugees. I can’t recall the script, but I must have been given a good part because I received in payment a pink stuffed rabbit. Not long after, I was in a crowd watching Czechoslovak troops parade through London before going overseas to fight. A passing soldier paused to scoop me up, and the next day a picture appeared in the paper together with the caption “A father says goodbye to his daughter.” My mother thought the mix-up hilarious; my father not so much.

  Often when my father was away on a trip, my mother seized the opportunity to indulge her spiritual side by attending a séance. Because I was born soon after my maternal grandfather had died, she thought that perhaps his spirit had been reborn in me. In 1941, she returned from a séance one summer’s day with the feeling that her beloved sister Marie, or Máňa, had succumbed to the kidney disease that had plagued her for years; the accuracy of this sad premonition was soon confirmed. The following year, when sister Kathy entered the world, my mother felt that Máňa had been reborn in her.

  Marie “Máňa” Spiegelová

  Pedro Mahler

  In accordance with Czech custom, our family observed both birthdays and name days—the day set aside to honor our particular saint. For me, that meant a celebration on May 15 and another in August, also on the fifteenth, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As for Christmas, we had a traditional dinner, a carefully decorated tree, and gifts. Dáša, separated from her immediate family, wrote to her parents that she had received “a stamp album, a manicure set, a book, a gold pencil, bath salts, perfumed soap and a new blouse.” She closed on a wistful note, “Perhaps we will see each other soon.”

  The letters that Dáša received from home must have disturbed her, even though the tone of her mother’s words was reassuring. Her father, Rudolf, had been prohibited from practicing medicine, and his office equipment had been confiscated by the Germans. “Daddy is always at home,” wrote Greta, “and in boredom helps me a bit. We went swimming three times during the whole summer. We always have to go to the lake, with the pool it does not work. We don’t even go to the park, only for a walk by ourselves.” Dáša’s family was able to remain in Strakonice, but, deprived of income, they had to move to a smaller house.

  GERMAN PROPAGANDA WITHIN the protectorate portrayed the exiles in London as captive to Jewish financial interests. Beneš was often referred to as a white (or honorary) Jew. The argument was damaging because more than a few Czechs acquiesced in the notion that Jews, especially those of German extraction, were at least partly to blame for the war. One message from the Czech Resistance informed London:

  To our own Jews, peop
le are extending help wherever they can, prompted by sheer humanitarian motives. Otherwise we do not wish their return. We feel alienated from them and are pleased not to encounter them anymore. It is not forgotten that with few exceptions Jews have not assimilated and that they sided with the Germans whenever this was advantageous to them, causing damage to the Czech people.

  Beneš alluded rarely and then only in general terms to atrocities committed against Jews and other minorities. When the Association of Czech Jews asked him to speak more forcefully, he declined, citing “the reasons of higher interests.” That official reticence, however, did not extend to the government’s radio broadcasts. Early in the war, Ripka authored a message titled “We Think of You” to Czech and Slovak Jews. In it, he condemned a long list of Nazi outrages, including discrimination and the confinement of Jews in ghettos and forced-labor camps.

  In June and July 1942, news bulletins included accounts of the systematic execution of Jews in eastern Poland. The reports were so sensational that many dismissed them as Allied propaganda. The sources, after all, were hardly objective: the Polish government in exile and the World Jewish Congress. Who could believe that 700,000 Jews had been murdered outright and that a comparable number had been driven to their deaths by hunger and disease? Surely not even the Nazis could be shooting or gassing prisoners at the rate of a thousand a day? At first the Allied leaders were skeptical, but in December, twelve governments (including Czechoslovakia) and the French National Committee joined in a formal condemnation of the Nazis’ “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.” In London, Foreign Secretary Eden confirmed to a hushed session of Parliament that the terrible reports were indeed accurate. He said that Jews were being transported from occupied countries to “the principal Nazi slaughterhouse in Poland,” where they were worked or starved to death or “deliberately massacred.” Edward R. Murrow referred to the reports as “eyewitness stuff” concerning “a horror beyond what imagination can grasp.”