Postwar Wounds - Spy Era - Article by MarieAnna Dvorak

1. Postwar Wounds – Spy Era
MarieAnna Dvorak
It has been seventy years since Czechoslovakia went from Nazism to Stalinism and StB,
the plainclothes secret (political) police, was established. For forty four years this
decidedly unchristian organization spied on, tortured and killed thousands of Czechs.
The sole aim of this force was to deal with any issues that could be considered anti-
communist. They even forged false allegations and evidence against anti-communists.
So reminiscent of those chilling words by Stalin’s notorious secret police chief, Lavrenti
Beria, who once boasted, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
After the Russian invasion in 1968, their power in victimizing their own citizens
strengthened and the totalitarian state reached its peak. Political executions were one
of the many forms of persecution. Another form of StB ruthlessness was psychological
torture that destroyed people's self-image and created a state of helplessness and
psychological regression. This strictly fear-inducing method was the mock execution
from which suicide was an ever-open means of escape. Some of their victims lost their
lives on the border, others made it to a free country. But reaching freedom wasn't
always a victory. For many it was a mourning for home, for their families and friends
left behind.
During the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the StB managed to destroy the files of some of
their victims. The saved files of 10,000 people are now sitting in archives within the
Czech Republic. Despite the historians' criticism, approximately 19 kilometers (12
miles) of files containing both names of spies as well as their victims, are available to
public.
Many of the survivors live in different countries and their future generation will one
day ask: "Who am I? Why am I here?" The evidence of why their ancestors left the
country of their roots will be destroyed by an unwitting public and by the former
secret police that is now part of the public. Such historically significant documents of
their action perpetrated on innocent people should be preserved in archives forever.
The era behind the Iron Curtain cannot be wiped out from our history and the StB was
the leading organization.