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Association commemorates 'Three Kings'

Vigil serves to increase awareness of former Army officers' fight against Nazis

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 19th, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST

Sandra Mašínová lays a wreath at the Sept. 10 ceremony. She says she loves her grandfather Mašín as though he were alive.

COURTESY PHOTO

Josef Balabán enlarge

COURTESY PHOTO

Václav Morávek

COURTESY PHOTO

Josef Mašín

In the early years of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, three ex-Army officers reigned over the Czech resistance.

Transmitting radio messages to allied forces in England, stockpiling firearms and plotting acts of sabotage targeting the heart of the Reich, they dodged bullets and Gestapo raids to free the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from Nazi control.

In the decades following World War II, the names Josef Balabán, Václav Morávek and Josef Mašín slipped into oblivion, strategically sidelined by communist leaders who viewed their legacy as subversive.

“Anyone who had ties to the West during the resistance was dangerous for the communists,” says Pavel Pobříslo, who in 2001 co-founded the Václav Morávek Association (SVM) to raise public awareness of forgotten resistance fighters and military heroes.

On the drizzly afternoon of Sept. 10, the organization brought together a wreath-wielding crowd of veterans, family members, soldiers and politicians, who gathered in the Kolín region of central Bohemia to commemorate the “Three Kings” — the legendary leaders of the Czechoslovak underground resistance movement against the Nazis during World War II.

For the past four years, the SVM and its supporters have held dozens of similar vigils to bring the names of heroes like the Three Kings back into the forefront of national consciousness.

“The types of characteristics nurtured in us by the communist regime were in direct contrast with the European notion of heroism,” says Pobříslo.

While the communist rulers generally recognized soldiers who fought on the eastern front in Russia during World War II, they ignored resistance fighters like the Three Kings, whose West-leaning ideals conflicted with communist interests.

“The Three Kings were men raised by the staunchly democratic ideals of [First Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue] Masaryk’s First Republic,” Pobříslo says. “They were full of the ideas of democracy and a yearning for freedom — their names alone were capable of unleashing a resistance movement,” he says. “For the communists, this was unacceptable.”

Shortly after its founding, SVM began lobbying the government to publicly recognize forgotten war heroes. “In 2005, [President] Václav Klaus promoted the Three Kings to the rank of generals in memoriam,” Pobříslo says. “I consider this to be the association’s greatest achievement.”

God and guns

The Kolín-based SVM held its first event to commemorate the Three Kings in 2003, when it organized a tribute for Morávek, who, as native of the town, is especially significant for the organization, Pobříslo says.

For the fourth annual commemoration, approximately 100 people clustered in front of the Kolín high school where Morávek studied more than 75 years ago.

The youngest of the Three Kings, Morávek joined the resistance in 1939, shortly after the demobilization of Czech troops following the 1938 signing of the Munich Dictate, says Pobříslo.

Relieved from his post of artillery battery commander in Olomouc, staff captain Morávek became part of the National Defense (Obrana národa), an underground diversionary organization that communicated intelligence to Allied forces and sabotaged the Nazi occupation.

It was at one their first meetings that Morávek met Balabán and Mašín. “Mašín asked [Morávek] what he believed in,” Pobříslo says. “He answered with a legendary sentence: ‘I believe in God and my guns.’”

Seasoned by their military experience, Morávek, Balabán and Mašín were soon at the helm of National Defense missions. “Their operations were so bold that the Gestapo itself nicknamed them the Three Kings,” Pobříslo says.

In 1941, after three years of resisting the Nazis, the Gestapo’s noose around the National Defense tightened. After numerous close brushes with the Gestapo, Morávek was killed March 21, 1942, during a shootout in which he was vastly outnumbered.

A modest plaque near the Powder Bridge in Prague’s Dejvice neighborhood marks the spot where he fell, Pobříslo says.

Mutiny and tragedy

After laying down wreaths in front of Morávek’s alma mater, the Sept. 10 procession relocated to a dilapidated farmhouse in the nearby town of Lošany to honor Mašín, who was born there more than 110 years ago.

A decorated soldier, Mašín earned his medals in World War I, when he deserted his Austro-Hungarian platoon to fight alongside Russian soldiers as a Czechoslovak legionnaire.

During the 1939 demobilization of the Czechoslovak Army, Mašín was stationed as a commander of an artillery regiment in Ruzyně.

“On March 14, 1939, he refused to obey the order and decided not to surrender the Ruzyně barracks to the Wermacht,” says Deputy Defense Minister Radek Šmerda. “He was immediately charged with mutiny and suspended.”

Immediately after his suspension, Mašín began organizing an independent resistance movement, eventually joining the National Defense.

After falling into the hands of the Gestapo following a 1941 shootout in a Nusle apartment building, where he was seriously injured, Mašín met his end at the Kobylisy shooting range, where he was executed after months of torture and questioning.

Despite the Gestapo’s brutality, Šmerda says Mašín never yielded any information about National Defense operations.

“I never had the chance to meet my grandfather, but I’ve seen countless photographs and read his letters,” says Mašín’s granddaughter Sandra Mašínová. “I love him as though he were a living member of my family.”

Like Mašín, the last of the Three Kings, Josef Balabán, was a Czechoslovak legionnaire in Russia during World War I. While he was not officially commemorated in the Sept. 10 vigil due to Kolín’s remoteness from his hometown Dobříš, about 75 kilometers (47 miles) away, his name was remembered by both military officers and family members.

According to Pobříslo, the SVM plans to hold a similar ceremony for Balabán this fall.

“Of course, my mother told me stories about my grandfather, but the significance of it never occurred to me when I was young,” says Balabán’s grandson Jakub Kolář. “My interest was only awoken by [historian Petr] Kourá, who began writing about Grandpa and sought me out.”

Whether Balabáns, Moráveks or Mašíns, the Three Kings’ descendents all expressed gratitude for the initiative to enliven their ancestors’ legacies.

“All this is the merit of people who take an interest in our family’s history,” says Mašín’s daughter Zdena Mašínová. “Unselfish people were hard to come by in the totalitarian regime.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com

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