PhilPaine.com

In the begin­ning years of this blog, I pub­lished a series of arti­cles called “Med­i­ta­tions on Democ­racy and Dic­ta­tor­ship” which are still reg­u­larly read today, and have had some influ­ence. They still elic­it inquiries from remote cor­ners of the globe. They are now buried in the back pages of the blog, so I’m mov­ing them up the chrono­log­i­cal counter so they can have anoth­er round of vis­i­bil­ity, espe­cially (I hope) with younger read­ers. I am re-post­ing them in their orig­i­nal sequence over part of 2018. Some ref­er­ences in these “med­i­ta­tions” will date them to 2007–2008, when they were writ­ten. But I will leave them un-retouched, though I may occa­sion­ally append some ret­ro­spec­tive notes. Most­ly, they deal with abstract issues that do not need updating.

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Mon­u­ment at Lidice.
The faces of the chil­dren are not gen­er­al­ized abstrac­tions. They are care­ful­ly recon­struct­ed from pho­tographs to rep­re­sent the indi­vid­ual chil­dren as they were in life.

We are so hamyd,
For-taxed and ramyd,
By these gentlery-men!
― The Wake­field Sec­ond Shep­herds’ Play, c.1425–1450 [1]

We are men the same as they are:
Our mem­bers are as straight as theirs are,
Our bod­ies stand as high from the ground,
The pain we suffer’s as profound.
Our only need is courage now,
To pledge our­selves by solemn vow,
Our goods and per­sons to defend,
And stay togeth­er to this end…

— Robert Wace, Le roman de la Rou et des ducs de Nor­mandie, 1160–70s [2]

On my return to Prague, last year, after tramp­ing in Hun­gary and Tran­syl­va­nia, my friend Fil­ip Marek took a day off for some more explo­rations of the Bohemi­an coun­try­side. This turned out to be the most emo­tion­al­ly charged day in my trav­els, and I’ve delayed describ­ing it because of its per­son­al impor­tance to me.

The land­scape around Prague is not much dif­fer­ent, at first glance, from that of South­ern Ontario. It’s rich farm­land, gen­tly rolling hills, and patch­es of mixed for­est sim­i­lar to those around Toron­to. Most of it was so pleas­ant that I couldn’t help replay­ing snatch­es of Dvořák, Smetana and Janáček in my head as the car rolled under the dap­pled sun­lit trees, past fields and vil­lages that seem to be both ancient and brand new at the same time. How­ev­er, our quest was to extract some­thing incon­gru­ous­ly dis­turb­ing and trag­ic from Bohemia’s woods and streams.[3] We were going to see two places that do not loom large in the his­to­ry books, but loom large in the kind of his­to­ry that I am con­cerned with. The first was the Voj­na Hard Labour Camp, in the for­est near the vil­lage of Příbram, and the sec­ond was the site of Lidice, a vil­lage that no longer exists.

The Voj­na prison camp, or NPT‑U, as the Com­mu­nist regime des­ig­nat­ed it, oper­at­ed between 1947 and 1961, when its pris­on­ers were trans­fered to NPT‑Z, the Bytíz Hard Labour Camp. Voj­na was a ura­ni­um mine, and its pris­on­ers were large­ly “polit­i­cals”, democ­rats, artists, writ­ers, old par­ti­san fight­ers against the Nazi occu­pa­tion, any­one who might be a focus of resis­tance to the Com­mu­nist regime. There were dozens of such camps in the Bad Old Days, but most have been demol­ished. This one has been pre­served. When Fil­ip and I arrived, it was closed. But the direc­tor opened it for us, and gave us a per­son­al­ly guid­ed tour, last­ing more than an hour. The direc­tor was extreme­ly knowl­edge­able, and was per­son­al­ly man­ag­ing the recon­struc­tion of the site. The flim­sy build­ings had most­ly been knocked down, or dis­in­te­grat­ed. But great care is now being tak­en to recon­struct every­thing as it was, using inter­views with and mem­oirs of sur­vivors, as well as archae­o­log­i­cal and doc­u­men­tary evi­dence. For exam­ple, I was shown a cell which was paint­ed dif­fer­ent­ly from the oth­ers in the same block. No one knows why it was dif­fer­ent, but since sur­vivors agree that it was, it has been restored that way.

It was an extra­or­di­nary vis­it. The Direc­tor answered all my ques­tions, which I chose care­ful­ly to elic­it infor­ma­tion I would not find in books. While only a small seg­ment of the com­plex of bar­racks has been restored, there was enough there to give you at least a vague feel­ing of what it must have been like. Most touch­ing was the small “polit­i­cal edu­ca­tion” room, were pris­on­ers were forced to endure dron­ing lec­tures on the “phi­los­o­phy” of Karl Marx, which I don’t doubt was not much bet­ter an expe­ri­ence than being worked to death shov­el­ing ura­ni­um ore. A “pun­ish­ment cell”, basi­cal­ly a con­crete cof­fin in the ground, did not need much restora­tion. To relieve vis­i­tors of the unremit­ting gloom, one of the build­ings has been fit­ted with an exhib­it of children’s art.

Com­pared to Lubyan­ka Prison, or the regime of gulag camps in the Sovi­et Union, Voj­na was pret­ty tame stuff, but it was enough to fuel my rage. Such vile places are not mere­ly archae­o­log­i­cal rem­nants of a dis­tant age. There are plen­ty of such places today. No one knows how many inno­cent vic­tims lan­guish in the infa­mous lao­gai of the Emper­or Hu Jin­tao, in Chi­na. Bei­jing admits to hold­ing 260,000. That is prob­a­bly just the tip of the ice­berg, and the num­ber of vic­tims has been steadi­ly climb­ing as Hu grasps that nobody in the rest of the world gives a damn about it, as long as they can get the cheap chem­i­cals, steel pipe, asbestos, hand tools, cot­ton… and fresh body parts for trans­plant, that slave labour pro­duces. Yes, there are plen­ty of such places, includ­ing some run by George W. Bush, Jr. and his sick­en­ing cronies. Some of my coun­try­men have been tor­tured in those.

Next we drove to Lidice. What town can you find on the map, but not on the Earth? Lidice. Lidice was a small vil­lage, west of Prague, which the Nazi occu­pa­tion regime had “erased from the map” in 1942. In defi­ance, car­tog­ra­phers still place it on their maps. I first learned the sto­ry of Lidice when I was a small child, from a tele­vi­sion dra­ma now long for­got­ten. It was one of the sto­ries that haunt­ed me, in my safe Cana­di­an child­hood, and drove me towards my present occu­pa­tion. When Fil­ip actu­al­ly took me to the emp­ty field where Lidice once stood, I’m afraid that noth­ing in my words or my face could con­vey the dark feel­ings churn­ing in me. I haven’t been able to write about it until now.

Here are the bare facts. On June 10, 1942, under the direc­tion of Horst Böhme, SS Com­man­der of the C divi­sion of the Ein­satz­gruppe, SS police forces marched into this small, pic­turesque Bohemi­an vil­lage, cho­sen because it was “typ­i­cal” and close to Prague. The roads around it were blocked, so no escape was pos­si­ble. The entire pop­u­la­tion was round­ed up. All the women and chil­dren were tak­en to a school build­ing. The men were tak­en to a barn. Then, start­ing in the morn­ing, all males over 16 years of age were brought out, in batch­es of 5, and shot. The bod­ies were left in heaps, as each new batch was brought out to stand in front of the pre­vi­ous batch, and the exe­cu­tion­ers stepped back a pace for each round. By after­noon, there were 173 bod­ies rot­ting in sun.

That was only the begin­ning. The 184 women of the vil­lage were sep­a­rat­ed from the chil­dren. They were forced onto trucks, dri­ven to the clos­est rail­way sta­tion, and from there shipped by train to Ravens­brück Con­cen­tra­tion Camp near Berlin. Only a hand­ful sur­vived the regime of hard labour and torture.

All the build­ings of the vil­lage were destroyed, razed to the ground and the rub­ble tak­en away. All the fam­i­ly pets and farm ani­mals were killed. All the graves were dug up, the bod­ies destroyed, the mark­ers removed. The entire process was filmed by the Nazis.

The chil­dren of the vil­lage were trans­port­ed to Łódź, in Poland. After a few weeks of semi-star­va­tion, and explic­it­ly denied any san­i­ta­tion or med­ical care, they were instruct­ed to write post­cards to their rel­a­tives. Sev­en of the chil­dren were select­ed for “aryaniza­tion”. The remain­der were shipped to the exter­mi­na­tion facil­i­ties at Chel­mo, where they were gassed. I shall pro­vide, at the end of this essay, a list of the chil­dren. I pro­vide this list for a rea­son. I want the read­ers of this essay to under­stand what I’m talk­ing about when I dis­cuss the con­cept of dic­ta­tor­ship. I’m not talk­ing about a “polit­i­cal sys­tem”, or a “form of gov­ern­ment” or some­thing that you keep in the same com­part­ment in your head as the one where you keep dis­cus­sions of gross nation­al prod­ucts or health care sys­tems, or bilat­er­al trade agreements.

When Fil­ip took me to the site of Lidice, it was a warm May after­noon, approach­ing the 65th anniver­sary of the attroc­i­ty. It’s a small park, now, with a taste­ful sculp­ture rep­re­sent­ing the chil­dren, a few flower beds, and a lot of grass.

This lit­tle expe­di­tion took place against an inter­est­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal back­ground. A friend of Fil­ip’s had just been attacked, and seri­ous­ly injured by a Neo-Nazi. Though they appear to be a small move­ment, and most Czechs dis­miss them as unim­por­tant, in fact, there are a shock­ing­ly large num­ber of them, and the police have a habit at wink­ing at their vio­lent attacks on the Roma, and the small num­ber of Africans and Asians who live in the repub­lic. The injuries that she sus­tained were seri­ous ― the Neo-Nazi had tried to run her over with a car while she was report­ing on one of their demon­stra­tions. She was hos­pi­tal­ized in a town known as a hotbed of these scum­balls, and the hos­pi­tal gave every indi­ca­tion of being per­fect­ly will­ing to let them come back and fin­ish her off in her bed. So her friends had dri­ven there and hus­tled her out, risk­ing a painful car ride back to Prague rather than leave her there. How per­ma­nent and dis­abling her injuries would be was not yet known.

These events serve as a reminder that there is noth­ing remote about dic­ta­tor­ship. Move­ments like the neo-Nazis may appear to be mar­gin­al phe­nom­e­na in places like West­ern Europe, but in much of the world, they con­sti­tute a norm. In many places in the world, there would be nobody in a posi­tion to res­cue Filip’s friend. In such places, crim­i­nal thugs are not a small move­ment of trou­ble­mak­ers exist­ing on the mar­gins. They are in charge. They are rid­ing in lim­ou­sines, direct­ing armies and economies, and are wel­come in the board­rooms of inter­na­tion­al finance, and in the coun­cils of the Unit­ed Nations. But they are not dif­fer­ent, moral­ly, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, or intel­lec­tu­al­ly, from the small-time thugs who attacked Fil­ip’s friend. They are the same scum.

Near­ly half the world still lives under the boots of dic­ta­tors. One dic­ta­tor alone rules more than a bil­lion peo­ple ― Hu Jin­tao, who launched his career by mur­der­ing chil­dren in Tibet, and keeps a thriv­ing indus­try of slave labour and exter­mi­na­tion camps going. Cur­rent­ly, there are dozens of such ver­min, whose sta­tus as dic­ta­tors are beyond dis­pute: Isa­ias Afw­er­ki, Bashar al-Assad, Omar Al Bashir, Paul Biya, Fidel Cas­tro, Hu Jin­tao, Islam Kari­mov, Seyed Ali Khamenei, Kim Jong-il, Alek­san­dr Lukachenko, Makhose­tive (self-styled King Mswati III), Per­vez Mushar­raf, Robert Mugabe, Teodoro Obiang Ngue­ma, Denis Sas­sou Ngues­so, Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, Muam­mar al-Qaddafi, Abdul­lah bin Abdu­laz­iz al-Saud, Choum­maly Saya­sone, Hun Sen, Than Shwe, Meles Zenawi are among the worst of them, but there are plen­ty of oth­ers, and plen­ty of cas­es of “heads of state” who would love to play in the same league, but have some lim­i­ta­tions on their pow­er, or whose regimes teeter on the edge of full dic­ta­tor­ship, or who rule indi­rect­ly through appoint­ed pup­pets. You have to keep remind­ing your­self of the most impor­tant and essen­tial fact about these crim­i­nals: every one of them has a Lidice. Every one of them. They are all mur­der­ers of chil­dren. Some of them are respon­si­ble for dozens of Lidices, or hun­dreds of Lidices, or thou­sands of Lidices. But there is always a Lidice for any dictator.

What I urge peo­ple to learn and under­stand is that the pow­er of these crim­i­nals comes direct­ly from us. It is our col­lab­o­ra­tion, our will­ing­ness to tol­er­ate them, and our con­stant efforts to val­i­date them and help them that gives them their power.

Dic­ta­tors only rule because we allow them to. They can­not rule unless they are giv­en legit­i­ma­cy by the world’s finan­cial and polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, and all the world’s polit­i­cal and finan­cial insti­tu­tions con­spire to do exact­ly that. They are giv­en the pow­er by us to buy the weapons with which they mur­der, tor­ture, and make war. They are giv­en the pow­er by us to spend the rich­es that they extort from their vic­tims, and they are allowed by us to keep their stolen wealth in banks, and they are allowed by us to flounce around the globe, brag­ging of their crimes, with­out fear of ever being arrest­ed, tried, or pun­ished. Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pub­lic offi­cials pre­tend that they are the same things as them­selves, that their “gov­ern­ments” have the same sta­tus as a real one, and that their crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions are the same thing as the legit­i­mate activ­i­ties of a civ­i­lized society.

One event sticks in my mind to sym­bol­ize every­thing that is sick and depraved in our world. When a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of my own coun­try died, Fidel Cas­tro was invit­ed to attend the funer­al. This lit­er­al­ly ― I am not using a fig­u­ra­tive expres­sion ― made me throw up. When I learned of it, I was sick with anger and dis­gust, and vom­it­ed. The thought that a filthy, degen­er­ate, loath­some piece of shit like Fidel Cas­tro, a racist, homo­pho­bic [see dis­cus­sion of Cas­tro’s per­se­cu­tion and tor­ture of gays], mass-mur­der­ing slave trad­er and exploiter of mil­lions of inno­cent peo­ple… the thought that this crim­i­nal garbage was invit­ed to my coun­try, and treat­ed with hon­our and respect by demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed offi­cials, was just too much for me to deal with. It got me in the gut, just as con­tem­plat­ing the site of Lidice got me in the gut. Why do peo­ple do this? WHY? How can any human being liv­ing in a democ­ra­cy will­ing­ly allow such an obscene event to take place? On that day, I was ashamed to be Canadian.

Let’s look at what it real­ly means to advo­cate democ­ra­cy. The most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of demo­c­ra­t­ic thought is that only freely and hon­est­ly elect­ed offi­cials con­sti­tute gov­ern­ment. No per­son or group of peo­ple who are not freely and demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed are legit­i­mate in any way. Dic­ta­tor­ship is not “anoth­er form of gov­ern­ment”. Dic­ta­tor­ship is not gov­ern­ment. It is only crime. Any­one who rules over oth­ers through force, and is not elect­ed, is mere­ly a crim­i­nal ― noth­ing else, and noth­ing more. If you believe that an unelect­ed crim­i­nal has any kind of legit­i­ma­cy, if you believe that they should be treat­ed as if they had been elect­ed, then it is self-evi­dent that you do not real­ly believe in democ­ra­cy, or gen­uine­ly advo­cate it.

Democ­ra­cy derives both its forms and its legit­i­ma­cy from moral­i­ty ― from the uni­ver­sal moral imper­a­tive of human rights. That moral­i­ty demands that all dic­ta­tors be treat­ed in this way only: com­plete rejec­tion, com­plete oppo­si­tion, com­plete anath­e­ma. No col­lab­o­ra­tion with a dic­ta­tor is moral­ly permissible.

It is immoral for any­one to treat a dic­ta­tor, or his hench­men, as if they were “gov­ern­ment”, or as if the ter­ri­to­ry they con­trol was a “coun­try”, or as if their flags, anthems, and sym­bols were legit­i­mate rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the peo­ple they bul­ly and exploit. It is immoral for the cit­i­zens of a democ­ra­cy to allow a dic­ta­tor to have an “embassy” or a “con­sulate” on demo­c­ra­t­ic soil, or to send “diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion”, or to in any way be accord­ed the priv­i­leges of a legit­i­mate gov­ern­ment. If a dic­ta­tor, or any of his hench­men, is found on the soil of a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation, it is nec­es­sary that they be instant­ly arrest­ed and put on tri­al for their crimes.

It is immoral to per­mit any dic­ta­tor or his hench­men to par­tic­i­pate in inter­na­tion­al bod­ies, such as the Unit­ed Nations. By hav­ing dic­ta­tor­ships embed­ded in its coun­cils, the Unit­ed Nations ceas­es to be a legit­i­mate body. It rep­re­sents noth­ing, should not be allowed to influ­ence free peo­ple in any way. If we lived in a tru­ly free and civ­i­lized soci­ety, then any elect­ed pub­lic offi­cial who know­ing­ly and will­ing­ly ate with, shook hands with, or pri­vate­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with a dic­ta­tor, or was even at any time in the same room with a dic­ta­tor, would be auto­mat­i­cal­ly removed from office and tried for treason.

It is immoral for any­one to engage in any eco­nom­ic exchange of any kind with a dic­ta­tor or his hench­men. All mon­ey or prop­er­ty in the hands of a dic­ta­tor is, ipso fac­to, stolen prop­er­ty. It belongs to the peo­ple that the dic­ta­tor stole it from. To receive it is to know­ing­ly receive stolen goods, and should be treat­ed as such by the law. In a civ­i­lized, demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety, any­one who know­ing­ly gives even a sin­gle pen­ny to a dic­ta­tor should be arrest­ed and do hard time in prison. Any­one who gives or sells weapons to a dic­ta­tor, or con­spires to pro­vide them with weapons indi­rect­ly, should be impris­oned for life. To give a weapon to a dic­ta­tor is trea­son to human­i­ty, an unfor­giv­able crime. Any cor­po­ra­tion that engages in exchanges with a dic­ta­tor­ship of any kind should imme­di­ate­ly be deprived of its cor­po­rate char­ter, have all its assets seized, and have all mem­bers of its board of direc­tors charged with crim­i­nal conspiracy.

No bank or finan­cial insti­tu­tion has the right to pro­vide ser­vices to a dic­ta­tor or to his hench­men. It is pre­cise­ly because dic­ta­tors and their ret­inues can deposit the wealth that they steal from the peo­ple into num­bered bank accounts, and that they are allowed to spend it freely, that it is prof­itable to become a dic­ta­tor. Any bank that know­ing­ly pro­vides such ser­vices to a dic­ta­tor does not have the right to exist, and should be put out of business.

When the cor­po­rate boards of direc­tors of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft agreed to col­lab­o­rate with the dic­ta­tor of Chi­na in the sys­tem­at­ic cen­sor­ship of the inter­net, in order to pre­serve his pow­er and men­tal­ly enslave the peo­ple of Chi­na, they were com­mit­ting a mon­strous crime — a crime against human­i­ty, a crime against civ­i­liza­tion, and a crime against the peo­ple of Chi­na. They deserve to go to jail for it, and in a decent soci­ety they would go to jail for it. The excus­es they offer are trans­par­ent rev­e­la­tions of their greed and moral corruption.

It is immoral for any­one to will­ing­ly serve in an army con­trolled by a dic­ta­tor. Even if one finds one­self in such an army by con­scrip­tion, or under threat to one’s fam­i­ly, or oth­er forms of duress, it must always be remem­bered that such an army is not a legit­i­mate army. It is one’s moral duty to do every­thing pos­si­ble to sab­o­tage it. If such an army is sent to fight against a legit­i­mate gov­ern­ment, then it is one’s moral duty to sur­ren­der. “Sol­diers” in a dic­ta­tors’ army are not real­ly sol­diers. If cap­tured by demo­c­ra­t­ic forces, they should be tried in an ordi­nary civil­ian court, to deter­mine if they have com­mit­ted civil­ian crimes. They should not be treat­ed any dif­fer­ent­ly from civil­ians. Offi­cers in the army of a dic­ta­tor­ship can­not claim to be mere vic­tims. Serv­ing as an offi­cer in a dictator’s army is a crim­i­nal act in itself, one which should be severe­ly punished.

The end­less cycle of exploita­tion and suf­fer­ing that dic­ta­tor­ship cre­ates is clear­ly illus­trat­ed by Lidice. That is what we, the demo­c­ra­t­ic thinkers, are fight­ing against.

We can­not grasp, because no human mind can grasp, the hor­ror of the mil­lions exter­mi­nat­ed in the Holo­caust, the Sovi­et Gulag, in the killing fields of Cam­bo­dia, the tens of mil­lions of chil­dren who died in the hideous, pro­longed ago­nies of Mao Zedong’s famines, or the chil­dren raped, bru­tal­ized and turned into psy­chopaths by Africa’s dic­ta­tors, or the dis­ap­peared vic­tims of Pinochet, Cas­tro, Suhar­to, and the count­less oth­er strut­ting gen­er­alis­si­mos and Great Lead­ers. It is all too much for any mind to wrap around. Death and suf­fer­ing on that scale can­not be con­tem­plat­ed except as a bland col­umn of sta­tis­tics, and the mind ceas­es to feel emo­tions about it.

That is one of the psy­cho­log­i­cal weak­ness­es that dic­ta­tors exploit most effec­tive­ly. We would not dream of invit­ing into our home a man that we knew had stran­gled a sin­gle child to death. But let that man mur­der a thou­sand, or ten thou­sand, or a mil­lion chil­dren, and we will invite him to speak to our Par­lia­ment, and shake his hand. All dic­ta­tors know this. They know that they are safest when their crimes are the most mon­strous, that there is no pun­ish­ment for them in this world, and they will be writ­ten up in the his­to­ry books as great men. And they know that every­one will col­lab­o­rate with them, every­one will help them, every­one will pave the way for them.

That’s why I will ham­mer into my read­ers the names of the chil­dren of Lidice. When you allow a dic­ta­tor to have an embassy in your coun­try, you are spit­ting into the faces of the chil­dren of Lidice. When you make a busi­ness deal with a dic­ta­tor, you are slap­ping the faces of the chil­dren of Lidice. When you allow your demo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tives to have cock­tail par­ties with dic­ta­tors, you are kick­ing the chil­dren of Lidice in the face, stomp­ing on their bod­ies with your feet.

I know that you can’t pic­ture the mil­lions of mur­ders that dic­ta­tors ― and their greedy and cow­ard­ly col­lab­o­ra­tors ― are respon­si­ble for. I know that you can’t real­ly feel any­thing about it. But you can damn well pic­ture the chil­dren of a sin­gle vil­lage. You can imag­ine what that hor­ri­ble day in June, 1942 was like for those small, help­less, boys and girls. You can imag­ine their ter­ror and agony. You can imag­ine their faces.

That is what dic­ta­tor­ship is all about. That is why you should fight dic­ta­tor­ship with every resource at your dis­pos­al. And that is why you should demand that your elect­ed offi­cials and your busi­ness­men and your bankers and your intel­lec­tu­als cease and desist from col­lab­o­rat­ing with such vermin.

The chil­dren of Lidice were Josef Bre­jcha, age 4; Josef Buli­na, age 11; Anna Buli­nová, age 13; Jarosla­va Buli­nová, age 10; Jiří Čer­mák, age 11; Milosla­va Čer­máková, age 7; Bože­na Čer­máková, age 9;Jiři Frühauf, age 3; Karel Hej­ma, age 7; Fran­tišek Hej­ma, age 13; Jarosla­va Her­manová, age 2; Marie Hočková, age 9; Věra Honzíková, age 12; Marie Hočková, age 9; Bože­na Honzíková, age 12; Zdeněk Hroník, age 7; Bože­na Hroníková, age 12; Mar­ta Hroníková, age 3; Zdeň­ka Hroníková, age 11; Václav Jedlič­ka, age 4; Karel Kácl, age 7; Věra Kafko­va, age 5; Anna Kaimlová, age 12; Jaroslav Kobera, age 9; Václav Kobera, age 5; Mila­da Koberová, are 11; Zdeň­ka Koberová, age 8; Hana Kovařovská, age 5; Lud­mi­la Kovařovská, age 4; Antonín Kozel, age 7; Věncesla­va Krásová, age 7; Rudolf Kubela, age 3; Fran­tišek Kul­havý, age 6; Jaroslav Kul­havý, age 11; Miloslav Liš­ka, age 5; Mila­da Miková, age 5; Jit­ka Morav­cová, age 1; Václav Moravec, age 10; Karel Mulák, age 11; Marie Muláková, age 14; Zdeněk Müller, age 4; Antonín Ner­ad, age 13; Ale­na Nová, age 3; Mila­da Novot­ná, age 14; Antonín Pek, age 7; Emílie Peli­chovská, age 14; Václav Peli­chovský, age 9; Josef Pešek, age 7; Anna Pešková, age 5; Jiři­na Pešková, age 6; Miroslav Petrák, age 10; Zdeněk Petrák, age 8; Jiři­na Petráková, age 14; Zdeněk Petřík, baby; Marie Pitínová, age 10; Štěpán Podzem­ský, age 3; Věra Prů­chová, age 15; Jose­fa Příhodová, age 11; Anna Příhodová, age 15; Jarosla­va Příhodová, age 1; Věncesla­va Puch­meltro­vá, age 13; Miloslav Rados­ta, age 5; Václav Rameš, age 8; Jarosla­va Ramešová, age 1; Bože­na Rohlová, age 7; Jiři­na Růže­necká, age 12; Jiři Sejc, age 5; Jiři­na Součková, age 11; Marie Součková, age 13; Miroslave Součková, age 12; Jarmi­la Straková, age 2; Lud­mi­la Straková, age 1; Josef Suchý, baby; Mirosla­va Syslová, age 13; Josef Šroubek, age 7; Marie Šroubková, age 14; Jarosla­va Štorková, age 9; Antonín Urban, 11; Věra Urbanová, age 4; Josef Van­dr­dle, age 13; Dag­mar Veselá, age 5; Karel Vlček, age 6; Jaromír Zelen­ka, age 1; Ivan Žid, age 7. [4]

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[1] Heil­man, Robert B. – Anthol­o­gy of Eng­lish Dra­ma Before Shake­speare — Holt, Rine­hart & Win­ston — 1952
[2] vers­es 60027–6034. ed. Frédéric Plu­quet, I, 2nd part. Rouen, 1827 tr. Hen­ry Krauss. Quot­ed in Krauss, Hen­ry — The Liv­ing The­atre of Medieval Art — Indi­ana UP — 1967
[3] A phrase that came imme­di­ate­ly to my mind, as it is the title (z ceskych luhu a háju = “Among Bohemia’s woods and streams”) of one of the move­ments of Smetana’s Má Vlast.
[4] source: Janusz Gol­czyn­s­ki — Oboz Smier­ci w Chelm­no Nad Nerem — pub­lished by the Konin Muse­um, 1991. This list is short 4 names, as the offi­cial count is 88, includ­ing one baby born in Ravens­brück and killed there.I have cal­cu­lat­ed the ages from the giv­en birth years, but, since these are not the exact birth dates, some of these ages may be off by a year. Thanky­ou to Fil­ip Marek for pro­vid­ing me with the cor­rect Czech spellings, and for pro­vid­ing extra information.