Gustáv Husák: Prison in Prague – torture made his heart skip a beat
There was no Czechoslovak president who did not experience prison during his lifetime. This was also the case with Gustáv Husák, a long-time party leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia, which was the territorial organization of the Communist Party of Slovakia.
A native of Slovak Dúbravka, where he was born on January 10, 1913in the party as an expert on rights, he paid for the Slovak National Uprising during the Second World War, and when the February coup of 1948 occurred, Husák was among the “red” winners together with Klement Gottwald (†56). He supports him for president of the Czechoslovak Republic in the same year.
Klement Gottwald brought the dark under the direction of Moscow to Czechoslovakia
Author: source Životy slavných, Mall.tv, Internet Mall, as
A dagger in the back
But the first sharp disagreements between Husák and the leaders of the KSČ had already occurred in the spring of 1948. “The development of the issue of statehood in February must have meant bitter disappointment for Husák and perhaps even regretful reminiscences about the failure to realize the vision of Slovakia as a Soviet Union republic, despite respected reality,” states historian Michal Macháček in the book Gustáv Husák.
Nevertheless, Husák got into the sights of coby “uncomfortable” a KSČ person who has “sharp nationalist character“, which bothered the communists. According to Marxist teaching, they should have dealt with class issues, not national ones. On the contrary, they were supposed to harm the class struggle.
And because the communists needed scapegoats in the trials that were planned in the 1950s, Husák became a direct participant in one of them. It was the so-called trial with bourgeois nationalistswhich followed after Rudolf Slánský (†51) and 10 other high-ranking communists were sentenced to death in a fabricated trial.
In 1950, Husák, “just 37 years old, was at the head of the Board of Trustees, the Union of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship in Slovakia, he was also the vice-chairman of this organization at the national level and also managed the church, or better said, anti-church policy in Slovakia, which earned him an ironic designation “red pope” the historian states. Still that same year, Soviet advisers demanded Gottwald arrest Husák. At first, according to the historian, he resisted, after the intervention of the Soviet and Hungarian communists he was “Husák accused of preparing Gottwald’s removal,” – so it followed arrest AND political downfall.
Unlawful arrest
“It became an excuse to secure Husák a false report of his intended escape to the West“, notes Macháček k an arrest that took place on February 6, 1951. Years later, Husák himself recalled the arrest with these words: “Three men with pointed revolvers informed me that they were arresting me on the orders of the Minister of Security. They handcuffed their hands, blindfolded them and dragged them away.”
The first path led to Ruzynské prison, “Where he finished humiliating medical examination”, notes Macháček, who pauses over the fact that Husák was still around at that time deputy, “so it was only from this point of view securing his person illegal“.
Husák spent 9 years in prison, he was originally given a life sentence
Author: Reprofoto: ČT
Oppressive torment in the castle
“Husák did not stay long in Ruzyna, the very next day he was to be transferred to Koloděj, where he lived the most brutal period of his prison anabasis“, the historian describes. “In the wooden cellar cell, his hands, feet and face froze, requests for warm clothing remained unanswered. The first three days he was not allowed to sleep and had to stand on his feet. During the interrogation, he was brought to a heavily heated room in a winter coat, where he was not allowed to sit down the entire time. The investigators beat Husák, strangled him and beat him against the wall.”
In the prison dungeon at the castle in Koloděj, where the State Security operated, Husák was tortured for weeks before the “investigators” forced fabricated confessions, which the future president literally signed on the line between life and death to keep a glimmer of hope for survival.
“They stopped working for me,” Macháček quotes Husák’s memories. “My legs were swollen, frozen, my heart skipped a beat, I had fainting spells. I miss my sight and my hearing. For the first time in my life, I saw the patterns on the carpet come to life, move, red mice crawl on the walls. I couldn’t move my tongue. The mind stopped working, the will was lost. A single animal desire grows: to close your eyes for a while, to lie down for a while.”
Husák experienced the greatest torment in the prison dungeons at the castle in Koloděj, which used state security during the era of socialism.
Author: Foto Blesk – David Malík
Czech – school of life
He wandered from Koloděj back to Ruzyn. he was in better shape right away, retracted his coerced and false confessions and demanded contact with Klement Gottwald. “Instead she already followed the well-known wave of violence that he endured for the next thirty days, and in total exhaustion he wrote an extensive confession,” writes Macháček. And right away called off. Everything happened again, repeatedly.
Husák later recalled how his behavior got on the nerves of the investigators. One of them “punished, sputtered, his saliva flowed like a rabid dog. Even though I had a good command of Czech, I never knew that it was so rich in vulgar and obscene expressions. He gave me a school.”
Gustav Husák – from communist prisoner to communist president Videohub
Prisoner of Prague
Alternatives to physical torture were other punishments. Macháček mentions that Husák was often locked in a dungeon, forbidden to go outusing cooperating fellow inmates to mu they were eroding the psyche and the like. “The said practice took its toll on Husák’s health. He developed a severe cough, physical weakness and a rapid reduction in his weight, while at one time Husák weighed only 56 kg“, shocks the historian.
Although he invoked the help of party leaders, including Gottwald, similarly to Slánský, he never invoked it. In the end, he couldn’t. He was imprisoned until 1954, before the sentence was passed. At that time he was Gottwald already a year after his death. Before he sat on the bench, the records show that Husák completed 1,438 hours of interrogationwhile the average daily interrogation lasted 3 hours 20 minutes, the longest of the interrogations lasted approximately 15 hours straight.
“Gustav Husák suffered overall 65 different interventions,” states Husák’s award-winning monograph written by the historian Macháček. It was most often about conjunctivitis, foot eczema, colds and tooth decay, but also bronchial catarrh. It is believed that by always retracting the forced confession, Husák saved himself from the death penalty. This is how the court steamrolled him “only” life imprisonmentwhich was accompanied by the ignominious revocation of citizenship.
Gustáv Husák spent several years in the Prague Ruzyn Prison.
Author: David Malík
Light at the end of the tunnel
He didn’t just get away with it in Ruzyna, where he was for the entire time of his arrestexcept for a short one stay in Koloděj. Gradually replaced the prison in Pankrác, in Leopoldov, Mírov and finally in Bratislava, where in 1960 he was granted amnesty by President Antonín Novotný (†70). After nine years behind bars.
“On the basis of the decision of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of February 7, 1961, President Antonín Novotný pardoned Husák secondary penalty of loss of Czechoslovak citizenship,” states Macháček, so that he could subsequently be Husák in 1963 fully rehabilitatedbecause the KSČ found that “that the criminalization of persons accused of bourgeois nationalism was fabricated“.
From the castle dungeons to the Castle
What happened next is another story. In the 1960s, Husák supported the reform efforts of the Communist Party, which resulted in the Prague Spring. He experienced this in 1968 as Deputy Prime Minister, who at the critical moment of the August invasion of Czechoslovakia he sided with the anti-reform wing and welcomed the troops of the Warsaw Pact as brotherly help. His leaning towards Leonid Brezhnev (†75) soon got him to the head of the Communist Party and the state, so that in 1975 he could move to the Prague Castle. This time not into dark underground dungeonsbeer to representative halls where only presidents are allowed. He used them until 1989.”
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Husák experienced the greatest torment in the prison dungeons at the castle in Koloděj, which used state security during the era of socialism.
Author: ČTK