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Amb. Gandalovič to attend Mašín’s funeral in US

  17:17

Czech Foreign Ministry confirms Amb. Petr Gandalovič will attend funeral service of controversial anti-Communist fighter Ctirad Mašín

© ČTK foto: Česká pozice

The recently named Czech ambassador to the United States will attend the funeral of Ctirad Mašín, a member of a group of anti-Communist fighters who shot their way out of Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, seen by some as heroes of the Cold War and by others as nothing more than murderers.

The Czech Foreign Ministry has confirmed that Amb. Petr Gandalovič will attend services in Ohio for Mašín, who died on Saturday at the age of 81 after a long illness. He was among five members of the so-called Mašín group who shot their way across the Iron Curtain in 1953 and managed to reach freedom in West Berlin.

When another member of the group, Milan Paumer, died a year ago, a number of senior figures from the Czech political right attended his funeral in Poděbrady — including the chairs of both houses of Parliament, the ministers of defense, foreign affairs and the interior, and Czech prime minister Petr Nečas (Civic Democrats, ODS).

After the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Mašín brothers had witnessed the arrest, disappearance and sentencing to death of family friends who were opponents of the regime, including Milada Horáková, a famous early judicial murder victim, who had been a friend of their mother’s, and in the early 1950s formed a military resistance group with some close friends.

Commenting on the death of Ctirad Mašín — who never returned to his homeland in protest over the fact that member of the largely unreformed Communist Party (KSČM) were members of Parliament — Nečas said in a statement carried on the Foreign Ministry’s website that he was a man of great courage whom he admired.

“He proved his heroism by his resistance to the totalitarian regime that deprived our country of freedom for several decades. He proved his courage despite facing grave danger. His fate belongs among those that we should remember in order to come to terms with our history,” Nečas said.

The death of Mašín in the US on Saturday at the age of 81 has reignited debate in the Czech Republic over whether he and fellow anti-Communist fighters were heroes or simply cold-blooded killers — a fact that Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg, the chairman of the TOP 09 party, alluded to a his own statement on Mašín’s passing.

“I am deeply touched. It is sad that this courageous fighter could not return to his homeland. … The saddest thing is that there were those who did not understand and denounced them. I am sorry about that,” Schwarzenberg said.

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Šárka Hamrusová: Díky laktační poradkyni jsem si přestala myslet, že je chyba ve mně
Šárka Hamrusová: Díky laktační poradkyni jsem si přestala myslet, že je chyba ve mně

Šárka chtěla kojit. Chvíli to ale vypadalo, že se jí to nepodaří. Díky správně zvolené laktační poradkyni nakonec dosáhla úspěchu. Poslechněte si...