“Never give up”: Zdena Mašínová dies at 92
Zdena Mašínová, whose family played a major role in modern Czech history, has died at the age of 92. Her father was a WWII resistance hero, while her brothers dramatically escaped from communist Czechoslovakia – leading to Mašínová and other family members suffering serious repercussions.
In an interview conducted before her death, Zdena Mašínová recalled how the Communist authorities lied to her family, saying her uncle Ctibor Novák, about to be executed for his alleged part in her older brothers’ flight to the West, had turned down a chance to see his mother – her grandmother – for a final time.
Zdena’s siblings Josef and Ctirad were following in the footsteps of their father, General Josef Mašín, who was a resistance hero executed by the Nazis during WWII.
The Mašín brothers, along with friends, decided to resist the hard-line Communist regime, which had seized power a few years earlier.
The brothers – whose use of violence later made them divisive figures – killed two members of the Communist security forces and a payroll clerk as they sought weapons and funds.
They ended up evading a massive manhunt as they shot their way to freedom in West Berlin in 1953.
Zdena Mašínová, then 19, and her mother were soon punished, says historian Petr Blažek.
“They were both jailed. The mother got a long prison sentence, and died in jail in 1956. The State Security released Zdena after some weeks, hoping to use her as a lure to capture her brothers. However, they revisited Europe but never returned to Czechoslovakia.”
Petr Blažek was close to Zdena Mašínová and announced her death on Wednesday at the age of 92. Despite her experiences, he says she had a positive outlook.
“She really had a tough life, and not only because the two totalitarian regimes persecuted her family severely, after its members stood up to the Nazis and the Communists. She herself had serious health problems. She was born with a disability and it appeared she might never walk. But she had 14 or so operations and in the end was able to walk, albeit with difficulty. Still, she never became bitter and was very optimistic. But at the same time, she was extremely aware of the kind of regime she was living under, and what the impacts of the totalitarian systems were.”
Zdena Mašínová fought for and achieved the legal rehabilitation of her mother and uncle after the fall of communism.
At the farm once seized from her family by the Communists, she later oversaw the creation of the Memorial of the Three Resistances, commemorating the struggle for independence during WWI, resistance to the Nazi occupation and the anti-Communist resistance after 1948.
She also regularly gave talks to schoolchildren, as Petr Blažek recalled.
“She always emphasised the fact that the 20th century was very cruel. That we should never take anything for granted. And her main legacy was the idea ‘never give up’. That was characteristic of her father, her brothers and her mother.”
