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The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes » Projects » Documenting the people executed on political grounds in the years 1948−1989 » Milada Horáková (1901–1950)

Milada Horáková (née Králová) was born on 25 December 1901 in the Královské Vinohrady district of Prague. After her sister Marta (b. 1899), she was the second child born to Čeněk Král and his wife Anna Králová (née Velíšková). Her father came from a milling family based in the village of Hodkov (near Dolní Kralovice) while her mother’s father was a joiner in Kutná Hora. Čeněk Král did not pursue a trade, but moved up the social ladder to work as a sales representative for a firm that manufactured pencils. This company was based in České Budějovice and was rather misleadingly called Národní Podnik or “National Enterprise” (perhaps to differentiate the pencil factory in České Budějovice, which was Czech-owned or in “national hands” from its “non-Czech” rival Koh-i-noor, which was based in the same town).

A son Jiří was also born to the family in 1908. Both Milada’s siblings, however, died of scarlet fever in 1914. This tragedy hit the entire family very hard and it also impacted upon Milada’s adolescence. The only consolation for the surviving family members was the birth of a final child (Milada’s beloved sister Věra) in 1915.

The children were raised in a spirit of patriotic fervour. Milada’s father was an enthusiastic supporter of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s Czech People’s (Realist) Party. The parents encouraged the children to study and take an interest in public life. Milada began studying at a girl’s high school on Korunní Street in Prague’s Vinohrady district. On 1 May 1918, however, she took part in a banned anti-War march, and was expelled from school after she had been denounced. She completed her secondary studies at a girl’s school on Slezská Street and graduated successfully in 1921. After being caught up in the atmosphere of enthusiasm for the newly independent republic and being infused with a strongly felt need to help fellow citizens affected by the War, Milada joined the Czechoslovak Red Cross. She was very active in this organisation from the outset and she also got to know its chairwoman Alice Masaryková, the daughter of the first Czechoslovak president. She decided to continue her studies at the Faculty of Law of Charles University, from where she graduated on 22 October 1926. After she had completed university, she got married on 15 February 1927 to Bohuslav Horák, whom she had fallen in love with while still a student. Horák’s family belonged to the evangelical faith, and Milada and her parents converted to the Moravian Church before she got married. This was rather unusual at the time, and it is possible to view it as an attempt to ensure harmony between the couple’s families. This grounding in Christianity is essential to understanding the strong moral stance Milada Horáková adopted later in life.

As a young lawyer, Milada got her first job with Prague’s Central Social Services Authority, which was managed at the time by Dr. Petr Zenkl. Meeting with this leading figure of Czech democratic politics was indicative of the future direction Milada Horáková’s life was to take. She was a woman with strong social convictions, which she was able to pursue fully in both of the places where she worked before the War – in the endowment department and also the mother and child care department of Prague’s municipal authority. Her work and public activity for the Czechoslovak Red Cross led her to become increasingly interested in the status of women in the new republic. A key moment in this respect occurred in 1923, when Milada Horáková met with the founder of the Czech women’s movement, Senator Františka Plamínková (who was executed by the Nazis in 1942). It was Senator Plamínková who inspired Horáková to attend a conference on the codification of international law in The Hague in 1930 (where the young lawyer captivated foreign experts with her excellent argumentation and knowledge of legal and political issues). She also made her mark on the Women’s National Council and prepared draft legislation to deal with the status of unmarried women and children born out of wedlock. She also drafted bills to improve the status of women in family law as well as in blue-collar professions and in public service jobs. In 1925, the Women’s National Council was incorporated into the International Women’s Council. Horáková represented Czech women at an international forum and travelled to a number of European cities while establishing relations with women’s organisations abroad. Unfortunately, her determined and wide-ranging work for the Czech women’s movement has remained overshadowed by her post-War political activities, and it is necessary to add that current Czech policies regarding women have failed to successfully carry on this part of Milada Horáková’s legacy.

Horáková and her husband’s only child, Jana, was born in 1933, but not even her maternal duties and caring for her daughter could keep Milada away from work and public life for long. She was deeply affected by the increasing international tension that prevailed during the second half of the 1930s. The shadow of Nazi ideology and the Sudeten German movement in the Bohemian borderlands had shaken the Czech political scene, even before the election of a new president after the abdication of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in December 1935. The last great demonstration of Czech resolve to defend the democratic republic against the Munich Agreement took place at the 10th General Congress of the Sokol youth movement in 1938, and Milada Horáková contributed significantly to the preparation of this event (see archive document no. 3). The events in Munich, the annexation of the border territories by Hitler’s Germany as well as the subsequent resignation of President Eduard Beneš and his departure for England were all a major shock to Czech society. Milada Horáková, however, definitely did not belong among those who resigned themselves to this critical situation. The urgent needs of Czechs who were expelled from the borderlands kept her occupied for most of the hectic months before the occupation of the remainder of the crippled republic. In arranging assistance, she considered her priority to be ensuring livelihoods for displaced families with children. (She formulated a plan to provide rehabilitation loans to impoverished tradesmen, for example). The curtailment of democratic rights in the so-called “Second Republic” also resulted in pressure to reduce female employment, and Milada Horáková had to leave her job at the Prague Municipal Authority shortly before the occupation. Even then, however, she did not simply wring her hands, but began arranging resistance actions. First, she was part of a working group that was given the task of preparing the groundwork for the resistance activity of the Political Centre (Politické ústředí) and subsequently the Central Leadership of Home Resistance (Ústřední vedení odboje domácího). (Her collaborators on this project were Prof. JUDr. Zdeněk Peška, Dr. Karel Bondy and Dr. Václav Hora). Horáková later became a member of the central group of the Committee of the Petition “We Remain Faithful” (Petiční výbor Věrni zůstaneme), which also comprised Prof. Vojtěch Čížek, František Andršt, doc. Dr. Josef Fišer, Prof. Volfgang Jankovec, and Anna Pollertová (Horáková’s husband led the so-called agricultural programme group and arranged reports for the émigré community in London). At the same time, she also arranged assistance for the families of imprisoned resistance workers and airmen fighting abroad.

On 2 July 1940, Horáková was arrested with her husband and spent practically the next two years in detention whilst being questioned by the Gestapo in Pankrác and on Charles Square (Karlovo náměstí) in Prague, where she was ruthlessly interrogated. She spent another two years at the “Small Fortress” (Malá Pevnost) in Terezín, where her husband was also imprisoned. Although they were unable to meet, they knew about each other and that gave them strength. From 22 June 1944, she was held in custody by the German People’s Court in prisons in Leipzig and Dresden before being sentenced to eight years’ hard labour on 23 October 1944. (Originally, the death sentence had been proposed for her). She went to a prison in Aichach, Upper Bavaria, to serve her sentence and this was where she was liberated by the US Army. Horáková returned to her homeland on 20 May 1945.

Despite the fact that Milada Horáková promised to devote herself exclusively to her family after being reunited with her husband and daughter, the epochal events after the War never gave her the opportunity to do so. According to her own statement, which was later recorded in Secret Police interrogation records, it was a conversation with President Eduard Beneš that prompted her to become active in the National Socialist Party. She was elected as a member of the Provisional National Assembly on 14 October 1945. Another of Horáková’s important activities was her involvement in the Union of Liberated Political Prisoners (Svaz osvobozených politických vězňů) where she held the post of vice-chairperson. She also made efforts to revive the National Women’s Council, but Václav Nosek’s communist-controlled Ministry of the Interior had no interest in renewing the registration of this organisation. Instead, the Council of Czechoslovak Women (Rada československých žen) was established with a magazine to represent it in the press, which was first called Women’s Council (Rada žen) and later changed its name to Vlasta. (This began publication in January 1947. Its first editor was the writer Nina Bonhardová, who was subsequently prosecuted for political reasons). Milada Horáková worked on the board of management of this organisation. Most of her colleagues on the magazine had leftwing political affiliations (e.g. the communist writer Jarmila Glazarová, the trade unionist Milada Netušilová, and the social democrats Ludmila Jankovcová and Zdenka Müllerová). From the outset, Milada Horáková had to fight hard with them to maintain this organisation’s non-party-political impartiality and democratic atmosphere. Similarly difficult clashes also awaited her in parliament, where she bravely rebuffed populist attacks by Antonín Zapotocký on the National Socialist Minister of Justice Prokop Drtina and National Socialist policy with regard to retributive justice for punishing Nazis and collaborators after World War II.

Milada Horáková insisted on the complete observance of the rule of law in retribution trials, where serious errors had occurred according to information from her electoral region (České Budějovice). By that time, Antonín Zapotocký was already asserting the principles of communist pseudo-justice, which Horáková would later actually have to tragically endure. He emphasised the active role of a “well directed prosecutor” who was obliged to secure the conviction of the guilty at all costs, because “the task of the prosecutor is not to judge whether the accused is innocent or guilty, or whether there were any mitigating circumstances,... but to weigh up what will incriminate the guilty and convict them.” In other important parliamentary speeches Milada Horáková dealt with foreign policy issues. She supported the idea that Czechoslovakia should not isolate itself from the world and should refrain from focusing exclusively on the USSR. In doing so, she was a constant source of irritation to communist deputies and others who expounded the idea of “the eternally treacherous West.” After the ministers from democratic parties resigned, the republic was subjected to a communist putsch in February 1948. Action committees controlled by communists began to go on the rampage and the first arrests of well known democrats were made. Some leading National Socialists as well as a number of Milada Horáková’s friends emigrated soon after February 1948 (e.g. (Hubert Ripka, followed by Petr Zenkl and Růžena Pelantová a while later).

Horáková was ousted from the Council of Czechoslovak Women, and she herself resigned from parliament the day Jan Masaryk died (Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, was murdered on 10 March 1948. He was probably killed by the Soviet secret service by being thrown out of a window in his apartment). She was confronted with the fact that a number of co-workers from the National Socialist Party switched their allegiance to the “revitalised” Socialist Party, which was something that was difficult to accept. Despite the fact that friends urged her to leave the country, she decided just like she did after the occupation in 1939 that she would not fecklessly renounce her membership of the National Socialists. She also decided to help the families of those who were the first to be arrested and to maintain links and exchange information with the émigré population just as naturally as she and her husband maintained contact with London during the War. She began working with the so-called “political six” (politická šestka), the illegal leadership of the National Socialists composed of Josef Nestával, František Račanský, Josef Čupera, Karel Šobr and František Dlouhý. She also participated in organasing a meeting in the Prague district of Vinoř with representatives of the Social Democrats and the People’s Party as part of a covert opposition initiative. This meeting attracted the attention of the Secret Police, who saw it as a scheme to begin unifying a “political response” to the situation. The immediate motive for the arrest of Milada Horáková on 27 September 1947 was apparently some trips she made around the south Bohemian region with rank-and-file party members. The security services interpreted this as the “arrangement of escape routes from the republic via the Šumava region.” Bohuslav Horák managed to escape, and he eventually emigrated after hiding for a while with friends.

His wife, meanwhile, had to endure endless interrogations, which initially followed several lines of inquiry: Had she helped in preparing Petr Zenkl’s defection? Why had she met with President Beneš’s secretary Václav Sýkora? The interrogators looked for things to charge her with. Based on testimony from Jaromír Kopecký, a former diplomat and fellow member of the foreign affairs committee of the National Socialist Party, a course of action began to be outlined as to how the trial of Milada Horáková and her collaborators would proceed. It was originally prepared as a trial with a so-called “Directory” (named after the Directory that held power in France during the turbulent years of 1795-1799) and was later presented as the trial of “those who led a seditious conspiracy against the republic.” The Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership’s interest in discrediting supporters of former democratic parties and political émigrés also played a role in this process. Democratic political resistance could not be tried as such, but as a branch of the espionage network of imperialist powers, particularly the USA. It was necessary to fabricate a story that turned patriots and former Gestapo prisoners into warmongers and traitors who betrayed the people’s democratic establishment.

The trial of Milada Horáková et al began before the State Court on 31 May 1950. The accused comprised people of various political hues: Milada Horáková, Josef Nestával, Fráňa Zemínová, Antonie Kleinerová, František Přeučil and Jiří Hejda belonged to the leadership of the National Socialists, Zdeněk Peška and Vojtěch Dundr were Social Democrats, Bedřich Hostička and Jiří Křížek were with the People’s Party. Záviš Kalandra was a “Trotskyite,” Oldřich Pecl was a supporter of the National Socialists, and finally, there was also Jan Buchal, a rank-and-file member of the National Socialists who was accused of being “the leader of a terrorist gang in the Ostravsko region.” The judging panel consisted of the following members: the presiding judge Karel Trudák, judges from the people Miloš Kučera and Jan Polanecký, as well as the professional judges Otakar Matoušek and Karol Bedrna. The prosecutors were Josef Urválek, Juraj Vieska, Jiří Kepák, Antonín Havelka and Ludmila Brožová (married name: Polednová). Milada Horáková testified on the very first day of the trial. The testimony of the other accused and witnesses continued for eight more days, and this process was accompanied by mass hysteria calling for maximum punishments. Eventually four death sentences were handed out – to Milada Horáková, Jan Buchal, Oldřich Pecl and Záviš Kalandra, along with three terms of life imprisonment and other heavy jail sentences ranging from 15 to 26 years, as well as the forced confiscation of property and the loss of civil rights.

The appeals of the condemned and applications to the president for clemency (Milada Horáková waived this option, but an application was submitted by her father and sister) were merely a formality that delayed the inevitable. President Klement Gottwald only hesitated over Horáková, as many leading international figures had appealed for her sentence to be commuted. In the end, however, he approved the verdict. Milada was only given permission to say goodbye to her closest relatives: her daughter Jana, sister Věra and sister’s husband.

On the morning of 27 June 1950, Milada Horáková was the last of the four condemned prisoners to be executed. No urn with her ashes was given to her family, and to this day it is not known what became of them. In 1991, President Václav Havel awarded her the Order of T.G. Masaryk, First Class, in memoriam. The date on which Milada Horáková died has since become an official Day of Commemoration for the Victims of the Communist Regime.