Prague Winter

by Madeleine Albright

  215 “In this situation”: Beneš, radio broadcast of May 15, 1942, quoted in ibid., 198.

  216 “BBC broadcasts call too much”: Memo dated May 21, 1942, unsigned and on blank paper, with the name “Korbel” scribbled in the upper-right corner, obtained by the author from the Czech Foreign Ministry.

  218 “in a bad way”: František Sitta, quoted in Ivanov, Target: Heydrich, 174.

  218 “The shots which sounded”: J. Korbel, Czechoslovak-language broadcast from London, May 30, 1942.

  218 “From certain indications”: Masaryk, interview with NBC radio, New York City, June 15, 1942, Czechoslovak Sources and Documents, Speeches of Jan Masaryk in America (New York: Czechoslovak Information Service, 1942), 71–72.

  219 “traitor or a quisling”: J. Korbel, broadcast from London, May 30, 1942.

  219 “The leaders of today’s Germany”: J. Korbel, broadcast from London, May 27, 1942.

  219 “Can Korbel be told”: June 1942, BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park.

  221 “We didn’t find any traitors”: Gestapo agent, quoted by Josef Chalupsky, quoted in Ivanov, Target: Heydrich, 260.

  222 “right through the whole city”: Tereza Kasperová, quoted in ibid., 215.

  228 “if future generations”: Knox, quoted in Radomír Luža, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech-German Relations, 1933–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 236 n.

  17. Auguries of Genocide

  229 “This is the most crucial year”: J. Masaryk, addressing the women’s division of the American Jewish Congress, New York, April 28, 1942, quoted in Czechoslovak Sources and Documents, Speeches of Jan Masaryk in America (New York: Czechoslovak Information Service, 1942), 56.

  229 “periodic ethical and moral blackouts”: J. Masaryk, radio broadcast, Columbia Broadcasting Company, New York, November 5, 1941, quoted in ibid., 18.

  229 “Until the war is over”: Masaryk, address at Rollins College, Winter Park, Fla., February 4, 1942, quoted in ibid., 22.

  230 “Every Sudeten German”: Beneš, quoted in Compton Mackenzie, Dr Beneš (London: George G. Harrap, 1946), 293.

  230 “President Beneš has found”: Lockhart, memo to Halifax, October 7, 1940, quoted in Vít Smetana, In the Shadow of Munich: British Policy Towards Czechoslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich Agreement (1938–1942) (Prague: Charles University, Karolinum Press, 2008), 276.

  231 “puffed-up gangster”: J. Masaryk, quotations from Jan Masaryk, Jan Masaryk: Speaking to My Country (London: Lincolns-Prager, 1944), 19–21.

  231 “Masaryk entered the hall”: J. Korbel, “Portrait of J. Masaryk,” unpublished manuscript.

  232 “because my charwoman”: Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, Jan Masaryk: A Personal Memoir (Norwich, England: Putnam, 1956), vii–viii.

  232 “My dear children”: J. Korbel, “Portrait of J. Masaryk,” unpublished manuscript.

  234 “a stamp album”: Dáša Deimlová, letter to her parents, January 1940.

  234 “Daddy is always at home”: Greta Deimlová, letter to Dáša Deimlová, August 8, 1940.

  235 “To our own Jews”: Quoted in Lisa Rothkirchen, Jews of Bohemia and Moravia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press; Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), 184.

  235 “the reasons of higher interests”: Beneš, quoted in Jan Lániček, “The Czechoslovak Service of the BBC and the Jews During World War II,” paper distributed at “Ties That Bind,” London conference commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the Czechoslovak government in exile, September 2010, 8.

  236 “the principal Nazi slaughterhouse”: Eden, debate in the House of Commons, London, vol. 385, December 17, 1942, 2082, www.ww2talk.com/forum/holocaust/41529-mr-eden-commons-dec-1942-a.html.

  236 “eyewitness stuff”: Murrow, “A Horror Beyond What Imagination Can Grasp,” in Reporting World War II, part 1: American Journalism 1938–1944 (New York: Library of America, 1995), 453.

  236 “All the help and relief”: Strańský, quoted in Lániček, “The Czechoslovak Service of the BBC and the Jews During World War II,” 18.

  236 “every crime”: Beneš, quoted in Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution Against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 40.

  18. Terezín

  241 “I have to get used to”: Olga Körbelová, letter to Greta Deimlová, July 22, 1942.

  241 “Father will have a heavy heart”: Ibid.

  241 “We have had visitors”: Olga Körbelová, letter to Greta Deimlová, July 29, 1942.

  244 “After they looted”: Gerty Spies, My Years in Theresienstadt: How One Woman Survived the Holocaust (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997), 59–61.

  249 “most people couldn’t carry”: Letter from Hana Malka to Michael Dobbs, January 14, 1998.

  250 “Lilka’s sister has died”: Helga Weissová, quoted in Hannelore Brenner, The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope and Survival in Theresienstadt (New York: Schocken Books, 2009), 46.

  251 “Wash your hands”: Ibid., 48.

  251 “You didn’t have to”: Weissová, quoted in ibid., 154.

  253 “I hereby declare”: Petr Ginz, diary, February 16, 1944, quoted in Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 169.

  253 “Manchuria is not”: Ginz, quoted in Marie Rút Křížková, Kurt Jiří Kotouč, and Zdenĕk Ornest, eds., We Are Children Just the Same: Vedem, the Secret Magazine by the Boys of Terezín (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995), 135.

  254 “Is a man who is given”: Egon Redlich, The Terezín Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Saul S. Friedman (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 134.

  255 “Although I was not bound”: Vera Schiff, Theresienstadt: The Town the Nazis Gave to the Jews (Toronto: Lugus, 1996), 74.

  19. The Bridge Too Far

  256 “Hitler and his lot”: Clara Emily Milburn, Mrs. Milburn’s Diaries: An Englishwoman’s Day-to-Day Reflections 1939–45, ed. Peter Donnelly (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), 167.

  256 “Our cause is internationally assured”: František Moravec, Master of Spies: The Memoirs of General František Moravec (London: Bodley Head, 1975), 229.

  259 “right interesting”: U.S. Department of State, IDS Special Report no. 574, July 6, 1943.

  260 “Roosevelt esteems your sound advice”: Hopkins, May 18, 1943, quoted in Eduard Táborský, President Eduard Beneš: Between East and West 1938–1948 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1981), 129.

  261 “I passed . . . demolished hamlets”: Eduard Beneš, Memoirs of Dr Eduard Beneš (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), 279.

  262 “Masaryk refused to accept”: Beneš, quoted in Táborský, President Eduard Beneš, 135.

  262 “better than yesterday”: Stalin, quoted in ibid., 167.

  262 “I consider all our negotiations”: Beneš, quoted in Josef Korbel, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia (1938–1948): The Failure of Coexistence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), 85.

  262 “a new Soviet Union”: Beneš, Memoirs of Dr Eduard Beneš, 262.

  264 “survive the war better”: Ibid., 274.

  20. Cried-out Eyes

  267 “The Cleaning Service”: George E. Berkley, Hitler’s Gift: The Story of Theresienstadt (Boston: Branden Books, 1995), 132.

  267 “Performances multiplied”: Gerty Spies, My Years in Theresienstadt: How One Woman Survived the Holocaust (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997), 79–81.

  268 “Never become a mere number”: Rabbi Baeck, quoted in Berkley, Hitler’s Gift, 156.

  274 “Since yesterday”: Berkley, Hitler’s Gift, 176.

  274 “This Jewish city”: ICRC report, quoted in ibid., 177–8.

  27
7 “‘Now then, gentlemen’”: Marie Rút Křížková, Kurt Jiří Kotouč, and Zdenĕk Ornest, eds., We Are Children Just the Same: Vedem, the Secret Magazine by the Boys of Terezín (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995), 128.

  277 “Even the kings of Egypt”: Egon Redlich, The Terezín Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Saul S. Friedman (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 160.

  278 “As far as Dresden”: Jiří Barbier, letter to Dáša Deimlová, November 11, 1946.

  278 “We had to get out”: Ibid.

  279 “With that we parted”: Ibid.

  280 “October 23, 1944”: Alice Ehrmann, in Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 404.

  281 “I’ve had enough”: Eichmann, quoted in Berkley, Hitler’s Gift, 225.

  283 “Twelve meters long”: Frantisĕk Kraus, “But Lidice Is in Europe!” in Art from the Ashes, ed. Lawrence L. Langer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 66.

  284 “I sink back”: Ibid., 69.

  21. Doodlebugs and Gooney Birds

  290 “the light-hearted bulldog view”: Alexander Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan (1938–1945), ed. David Dilks (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 647.

  290 “One can see”: Harold Nicolson, The War Years: Diaries and Letters 1939–1945, ed. Nigel Nicolson (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 394.

  293 “Poland in this war”: Beneš, quoted in Compton Mackenzie, Dr Beneš (London: George G. Harrap, 1946), 295.

  295 “People say to me”: Nicolson, The War Years, 394, 464.

  296 “Lenin said that people”: Masaryk, quoted in Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, Jan Masaryk: A Personal Memoir (Norwich, England: Putnam, 1956), viii–ix.

  296 “What I want”: Hitler, quoted in Wayne Biddle, Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 120.

  297 “Every time one goes off”: George Orwell, quoted in Philip Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 298.

  22. Hitler’s End

  300 “By rushing out”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, message to the Allied Expeditionary Force, December 21, 1944, quoted in Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command: United States Army in World War II, The European Theater of Operations, Office of the Chief of Military History (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Army, 1954), 380.

  301 “You, the veterans”: Remarks by the author at fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of the Battle of the Bulge, Bastogne, Belgium, December 16, 1994.

  302 “a silly old man”: Alexander Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan (1938–1945), ed. David Dilks (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 706.

  302 “rather disturbing”: Ibid., 716.

  303 “free and sovereign”: Churchill, quoted in ibid., 716.

  303 “poor Chamberlain believed”: Ibid.

  304 “the offending passage”: J. Korbel, letter to the BBC, BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park.

  304 “We want a strong”: J. Masaryk, New Year’s address, December 31, 1944.

  304 “What can one do”: J. Masaryk, quoted in Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003), 133.

  305 a man who, while sitting: This image was inspired by a line in Mario Cuomo’s address to the 1984 Democratic National Convention, “ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees,” San Francisco, California, July 16, 1984.

  306 “Apparently, Hitler has croaked”: Eva Ginzová, in Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 188.

  PART IV: MAY 1945–NOVEMBER 1948

  23. No Angels

  311 “The source of the tragedy”: quote from Katolické Noviny, April 26, 1942, cited in an article by Y. Jelinek, “The Vatican, the Catholic Church, the Catholics, and the Persecution of the Jews during World War II: The Case of Slovakia,” included in B. Vago and G. L. Moss, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe, 1918–1945 (New York: John Wiley & Sons; Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), 226.

  314 “Our soldiers will be going”: Stalin, quoted in Jan Stránský, East Wind over Prague (New York: Random House, 1950), 30.

  315 “They have liberated us”: J. Korbel, unpublished manuscript.

  315 “In our view”: Eden, quoted in Alexander Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan (1938–1945), ed. David Dilks (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 735.

  316 “Come help us everyone!”: Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997), 40.

  317 “are fighting unexpectedly well”: Teleprinter message to commander of Waffen SS from SS General Pückler, May 5, 1945, Prague, quoted in Jiří Doležal and Jan Křen, eds., Czechoslovakia’s Fight (Prague: Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1964), 109.

  317 “the Soviet forces”: Exchange between Eisenhower and Soviet High Command, quoted in “Anniversary of Liberation of Czechoslovakia,” State Department Bulletin, May 22, 1949, 666.

  318 “stand firm and strike”: Proclamation of the Czech National Council, May 7, 1945, quoted in Doležal and Křen, eds., Czechoslovakia’s Fight, 111–112.

  319 “People streamed into the streets”: Kovály, Under a Cruel Star, 44.

  24. Unpatched

  325 “were deep, always emotional”: Josef Korbel, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia (1938–1948): The Failure of Coexistence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), 123.

  326 “frail stature [with] red cheeks”: Hana Stránská, unpublished manuscript, 1994, chap. 5, p. 1.

  328 “The plane was about to land”: J. Korbel, unpublished manuscript.

  25. A World Big Enough to Keep Us Apart

  331 “Our people,” he declared: Beneš, May 9, 1945, quoted in Kálman Janics, “1945: The Year of Peace,” in Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority, www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/jani/jani11.htm.

  332 “is the historic task”: Prokop Drtina, Československo Můj Osud (Prague: Melantrich, 1991), 62–63.

  332 “Now we will definitely”: Gottwald, June 23, 1945, quoted in Janics, Czechoslovak Policy, www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/jani/jani11.htm.

  332 “In Nový Bydžov”: Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution Against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 43.

  333 “arm-in-arm with dirndled”: Hana Stránská, unpublished manuscript, 1994, chap. 15.

  334 “The war is over”: Ibid.

  336 “in order to remain hidden”: Tahra Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for the Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900–1948 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 257.

  339 According to the Czechoslovak government’s: Memo from Jan Masaryk to the U.S. ambassador in Prague, October 24, 1945, quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, vol. 2: General Economic and Political Matters (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1976), 1298.

  339 “sometimes accompanied by excesses”: Josef Korbel, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia (1938–1948): The Failure of Coexistence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), 138.

  339 “The disease of violence and evil”: Havel, remarks at dinner in honor of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Prague, February 27, 1992.

  343 “I think you would do”: Čurda, quoted in František Moravec, Master of Spies: The Memoirs of General František Moravec (London: Bodley Head, 1975), 221.

  26. A Precarious Balance

  344 “The Yalta line was meant”: Author’s interview with Havel, October 27, 2010.

  345 “victory over one�
�s smallness”: Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997), 62.

  345 “to rebuild the very foundations”: Gottwald, July 9, 1945, quoted in Josef Korbel, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia (1938–1948): The Failure of Coexistence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), 135.

  346 “That window used to be”: J. Korbel, unpublished manuscript.

  347 “Don’t write down anything”: Beneš, quoted in Josef Korbel, Tito’s Communism (Denver: University of Denver Press, 1951), 18.

  348 “Just look at it”: Tito, quoted in ibid., 72.

  351 “not a Communist”: Card entry, November 25, 1947, secret police document file no. 019952, Archive of Security Slozek, Prague.

  356 “You idiot,” he said: J. Masaryk, cited in J. Korbel, unpublished speech manuscript.

  359 “At two a.m. Masaryk entered”: Ibid.

  360 “Like my country”: J. Masaryk, address at Paris Peace Conference, August 15, 1946, quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1976), 225.

  360 “an extremely moving speech”: Description of statement by J. Masaryk at Paris Peace Conference, September 23, 1946, in ibid., 527.

  361 “Left to himself”: Marcia Davenport, Too Strong for Fantasy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967), 122.

  361 “You’re no more full-blooded”: Masaryk, quoted in ibid., 325.

  27. Struggle for a Nation’s Soul

  365 “If you go to Paris”: Stalin, quoted in Hubert Ripka, Czechoslovakia Enslaved (London: Victor Gollancz, 1950), 67.

  365 “Oh, he’s very gracious”: J. Masaryk, quoted in Marcia Davenport, Too Strong for Fantasy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967), 405.

  366 “little people, inclined”: Steinhardt, cable to State Department, April 30, 1948.

  371 “The strangest and least human”: Čapek, “Why I Am Not a Communist,” Přítomnost, December 2, 1924, translated by Martin Pokorny, capek.misto.cz/english/communist.html.

  371 “I do not agree”: Josef Korbel, Tito’s Communism (Denver: University of Denver Press, 1951), 124–125.