Posted on 03/05/2008 5:14:51 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
PRAGUE—The Czech prime minister has sparked a debate over his country's Communist past by decorating men who killed people when they fought the totalitarian regime and shot their way through to the West in 1950s.
Mirek Topolanek on Tuesday presented the honorary medal to Milan Paumer, 76, member of a group that killed six people in sabotage strikes against the Communist government and during their escape to West Berlin.
"Paumer belonged to a group that, when Communism declared war on its citizens, stood up to the regime and wanted to fight for the liberation of Czechoslovakia," he said.
Topolanek honoured Paumer's co-fighters, the brothers Josef and Ctirad Masin, during a trip to the United States last week where the two live.
The story of the Masin brothers and Paumer is the source of deep divisions in Czech society, its perception of Communist rule from 1948 to 1989 and resistance to it.
Anti-Communists said Topolanek's step was courageous and would give due credit to those who opposed oppressive government. Others, notably on the left, consider the Masin group too controversial.
"They chose the wrong means: violence," opposition Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek wrote on his blog. Communists, who remain a strong political force, see them as murderers.
Paumer dismissed those arguments.
"The murder of a tyrant is not a murder," he said when receiving the medal. "How do they imagine fighting against evil? Should we have thrown plum dumplings?" he said.
The Masins, sons of an army general and resistance leader executed by the Nazis in 1942, killed two policemen and an armed clerk delivering wages in ambushes to secure money and guns for their struggle.
In 1953, they decided to join the U.S. army in neighbouring Germany for what they believed was imminent World War III.
Two group members were injured and caught by a manhunt that involved thousands of East German police. They were executed along with the Masins' uncle while Masins' mother was thrown to jail where she later died.
Paumer was shot in the belly but managed to reach the U.S. occupation zone in West Berlin, alongside the Masins. They moved to the United States and joined the U.S. army.
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, an anti-Communist dissident in the 1970s and 1980s, did not endorse the decoration, saying that would require a broad public debate.
But Topolanek said the awards sought to spark such a debate.
"There often is talk about victims (of the Masins). I think we should list a comparisons, how many people died on high-voltage fences trying to escape a totalitarian country, how many people died in Communist camps?" he said.
Bump!
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