27.9. 1949 Milada Horáková was arrested

Milada Horáková was arrested on 27 September 1949 at 4.30 p.m. Her office was then thoroughly searched with the sole aim of finding evidence for the charges. This prominent politician and social activist subsequently became the main protagonist of a staged trial...

Milada Horáková was not only a Czech politician, but also a social activist. She graduated from the Faculty of Law at Charles University in 1926 and was involved in the women's movement, the Women's National Council. She worked at the Prague City Hall, specifically at the Central Social Office. She was a member of the Czech National Social Party from 1929.

"After 1938 she joined the resistance. She worked with the petition committee Věrni zůstaneme and the Political Headquarters. In 1940 she was imprisoned in Pankrác, and during the Heydrichiad in Terezín. In 1944 she was sentenced to eight years in Aichach Prison near Munich. After the liberation, she joined the restored ČSNS and became a member of the Provisional National Assembly," Jiří Hejda summarised in his book We Lived Bravely.

In 1946 she was elected to the National Assembly. She took her solemn oath on 17 June 1946, which read, "I promise to be faithful to the Czechoslovak Republic and to uphold the laws and to hold my office to the best of my knowledge and conscience."

After February 1949, she became uncomfortable, and demonstratively resigned her seat in Parliament. She was arrested at 4.30 p.m. on 27 September 1949. Her office was then thoroughly searched with the sole aim of finding evidence for the charges.

"A very interesting place connected with Milada Horáková is the building with her deputy's office on Fügner Square no. 6 in Písek, where she was elected a member of parliament in South Bohemia with great success, although a number of importantof course, as was quite common and predictable, she attended many of her meetings in Prague," writes Michaela Košt'álová in her book The Privacy of Milada Horáková.

The arrest of Horáková was followed in November by another wave of arrests, mainly of former National Socialists. Under the guidance of Soviet advisers, a "trial with the leadership of the conspiracy of sedition" - which will take place in the following year - is being prepared. And it was Milada Horáková who became the main protagonist of the staged trial. In total, four death sentences were passed. But Horáková was the only woman executed in the political trials.

Other trials followed shortly afterwards, into which this main one branched: 35 in total, with ten death sentences and 48 life sentences. The trial of Milada Horáková was in this sense the largest in post-war Czechoslovakia.

Michaela Košt'álová, The Privacy of Milada Horáková, Jiří Hejda, I Lived Bravely, Alena Breuerová and Jarmila Frejtichová, My Year 1949, www.wikipedia.org